Bonding with Your Unborn Baby from the Other Side of the World
Bonding with your baby starts in the uterus. This is also true for queer intended parents (IPs) pursuing surrogacy, but this type of journey makes gestational bonding more logistically challenging.
For straight couples who conceive without assistance, they are both experiencing the pregnancy together every day. For IPs, especially international IPs, the pregnancy can seem remote and disconnected. While a strong relationship and good communication with your surrogate or gestational carrier (GC) is paramount and can be facilitated through FaceTime, WhatsApp, phone calls, Zoom, or any number of modalities, there are some other technologies that can help queer IPs bond with their child during gestation from anywhere in the world.
Talking, Singing, and Reading to Your Baby
Humans have an amazing ability to bond through language, and we can even form a connection with one-sided conversations with non-human companions. I talk to my dog all the time, and I feel closer to her after a good ‘therapy’ session when all she does is ‘listen’ to me. The same is true for communication with your baby in utero, and you can do this through conversation, song, or reading aloud.
While communicating with your baby is beneficial at any point in the pregnancy, the sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age. After this point, your baby is fully able to hear in the womb. A study conducted with pregnant women and their newborn children in both the United States and Sweden demonstrated that the newborns are able to more easily recognize sounds in their mother’s native language compared to other languages. The authors concluded that this is because the babies were actively listening to these sounds for the last 10 weeks of gestation (1).
But what about queer IPs who are not around all the time to talk to the baby as it grows? Easy, there are a number of fetal headphones that strap on to the woman’s growing belly, allowing your baby to hear music or your own recorded voice reading, talking, or singing to them (2). International IPs can feel like they are sharing with their baby during the pregnancy, and if these fetal headphones are used after week 30 of gestation, it’s possible that the baby will come into this world already recognizing their voices.
Listening to Your Baby’s Heartbeat
The fetal heartbeat is one of the most prominent pregnancy milestones. It makes it real for parents to hear the very human sound of a heart for their baby. Historically, this event has exclusively occurred during medical appointments.
While my husband and I - and most international IPs - will do everything possible to come to the first heartbeat medical appointment at around 10 weeks gestation, it’s not always possible to make the trip due to cost or scheduling. While the appointment could be virtual through a video call, the quality and intimacy may not be ideal, and so the impact of hearing the heartbeat may not be as magical.
However, we live in the 21st century of medical grade consumer wearables, so there is a solution for international IPs and their GC: HeraBEAT.
HeraBEAT has been tested and validated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a medical device, and it easily straps to the pregnant belly and allows convenient listening to your baby’s heartbeat at any time, anywhere via an app. This way, even if you can’t make it to the clinic, you can still listen to your baby’s heartbeat with your GC from anywhere in the world and as often as you want.
Feel Your Baby Kick
The belly kicks are a hallmark of pregnancy, but participation in these brief, sporadic moments is next to impossible for international IPs.
However, a Scandinavian design team is trying to change this. Fibo by First Bond Wearables is a prototype wrist wearable that allows a non-pregnant partner to experience visual and/or haptic sensory cues every time the baby kicks (3).
While still in development and not yet available for purchase, this is such a cool idea for international IPs. Imagine going about your daily life, when your wearable band starts vibrating and lighting up at random intervals, signaling your baby is kicking and allowing you to share the experience your GC and baby are having at that exact same moment.
Meditation or Yoga with Your Baby
Exercise really does bring people together, and meditation and yoga are two great options to share quality, healthy time with your GC and baby.
While IPs won’t be able to feel the baby during these exercises, Apple Fitness makes it so you can work out at the same time. You start a FaceTime call on your iPhone or iPad, and then start a Group Workout in the Fitness app. The workout plays in sync with everyone on the call, and you can continue to communicate during the workout, either by motivating each other or just talking and sharing encouragement (4).
This provides a fun bonding experience with your GC and a nice story to share with your child when they are older about their first family exercise.
Tracking Your Baby’s Growth
There are a number of apps that let you follow the growth of your baby during gestation, often comparing his/her/their size to various pieces of food (i.e. pear). However, there is one app that is targeted towards dads as they follow along with the pregnancy. It is called Daddy Up, and I’m 100% sure that gay men have downloaded this app only to be disappointed at the type of ‘daddies’ they were referring to.
I have to warn you, this app is almost comically masculine and borderline offensive, but it’s cute how it tries to make the pregnancy journey ‘relatable’ to straight men by comparing everything to the outdoors and referring to bodily changes in the pregnant woman as ‘Lady clues.’ The theme of the wilderness continues with the baby being referred to as a ‘cub,’ and I can’t help but think the developers of this app really enjoyed reading the Berenstain Bears growing up.
Despite this cringeworthy theme, there are great resources, including educational articles and videos, journaling, checklists, and progress trackers to understand your growing baby’s development.
I just think there should be a queer version that is way less masculine and more accessible for all couples and partners. Maybe BabyMoon Family should make that happen…
Helping Your GC During the Pregnancy
While Daddy Up does provide some insights into the pregnant woman’s bodily changes, there are some negative pregnancy occurrences that neither the GC or IP want to experience. One of these is morning sickness, an all too common side effect of pregnancy and one that our own GC mentioned she suffered from during her own previous pregnancy.
If our GC does have morning sickness again during our pregnancy, I know my husband and I will want to do something. Thankfully, our GC has an incredible husband who will support and look after her, but what can we do from halfway around the world?
Yes, international IPs, there’s a wearable for morning sickness. Reliefband is an FDA cleared medical device that provides gentle pulses on the underside of the wrist. These painless pulses travel through the nervous system to the part of the brain that controls nausea and vomiting, reducing the neurological signals that upset the stomach.
The Reliefband has undergone clinical trials proving its ability to reduce vomiting and increase weight gain during the first trimester of pregnancy (5). As a physician and gay intended father, I would love to provide this for our GC to help relieve any discomfort she may have while helping us become parents.
In a post-COVID world, we have more ways than ever to connect remotely.
For queer international IPs, we have more options to connect with our GC, bond with our baby, and even help relieve some pregnancy discomforts from another country. We should leverage these technologies and share the experience and joy of our pregnancies as much as possible.
I believe that engaging with these technologies will make your family building journey feel more like an enjoyable baby moon, which is the goal of BabyMoon Family.
Disclaimer: BabyMoon Family is not sponsored by any of the companies or products mentioned in this article, but we would not say no to any samples for our upcoming pregnancy.
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