My “Before”

Tuesday 30 June 2026

I have been swimming a lot, when the internship lets me. I do my best thinking in the pool. Coach gave me a 4 × 400 free set on Friday and somewhere around the third one I realised what had been bothering me about all the Googling.

Here’s what I’d seen in nearly a week of evening and Tube-journey reading:

• Intended parents writing about their journeys. Blogs. Books. Podcasts. A lot of these.
• Surrogates writing about their experience. Also a lot. More than I expected.
• Doctors and clinicians explaining the process.
• Lawyers explaining the contracts.
• Activists arguing for or against the whole thing.
• Children’s books for ages 2 to 8 — sweet ones, picture books about how families are made.

And then nothing. Or almost nothing.

I tried different searches because I thought I was using the wrong words. I found a few adult voices and a lot of arguments, but almost nothing by teenagers who were actually born this way. Nowhere a thirteen-year-old with a question about the surrogate who carried them could read what a fourteen-year-old thought about the same question last year.

I keep going back and forth between two reactions. The first: we are a small group, surrogacy is not that common, maybe there are just not enough of us. The second: there must be thousands of us. I just do not know where anyone is.

I think the second one is closer to true.

And then a small, slightly stupid third thought arrived: maybe the way you find them is by being the first person to speak.

I am going to sleep on this one. Tomorrow is a busy day at the internship.

— D.