Mum is mum

Mother and Baby Editor Swati Chopra Vikamsey had her baby with the help of surrogacy. How different is that from having a baby any other way?

- Swati Chopra Vikamsey

Not different at all. Even if I would have carried Sheyaan in my own womb, it would be no different. He would still mean the world to me. I would love him the same. I would worry the same. It is, perhaps, easy to say this now—almost four years since my little baby came into my arms, the struggles forgotten, the pain dissipated. But even as I made the decision to opt for an unsual route to fulfil my desire to be a parent, I knew it would not matter.

Back then, in 2015, when I became pregnant with my first-born, it was an extremely complicated pregnancy, and I was on complete bed-rest for the entire duration. I started bleeding at about nine weeks, with no plausible explanation, and it never stopped. What made matters worse was that my amniotic fluid started dropping rapidly in the last two months. The doctors didn’t have any answers. Google didn’t have any answers. The bleeding continued. And so did the pregnancy— amidst countless scares, untold stress, heavy bleeding and intravenous iron infusions, I prepared for the inevitable every single day.