I do not understand why so many people have this thing about having kids the biological way
Like the way you hear a lot of people talk it somehow doesn't "count" if it's not theirs, and they'd rather have a surrogate or whatever than adopt or foster. I'm listening to an episode of Risk right now where this guy tells the story of how he married this woman who develops severe cancer and becomes unable to conceive children or make more embryos. But fear not! They froze some of her embryos and get a surrogate and then make a baby that is biologically theirs and it's just so gross. He refers to them as being unable to have a baby "the normal way." Why is the method by which you have the baby so important? It's nine months compared to parenting, which is like at least an eighteen year job.
Later in the story, shit goes south and their surrogate goes into labor with the baby still at 19 weeks (babies are not viable outside of the mother until 23 weeks). There's a risk of sepsis and shock if she continues to carry ... and she leaves it up to them but says that she's willing to keep carrying the child for them if they want, and they say yes. So she does and she goes into shock at 23 weeks, 3 days and they deliver the baby via emergency c-section. Then their son is in the NICU for the next several months.
He doesn't mention the cost of all of this, which would be tens of thousands of dollars. Presumably insurance covered some amount of it, but insurance is typically pretty shitty about NICU care unless you have double coverage, and even then it's not necessarily great. So like, they spend thousands of dollars and endanger the life of a relative stranger in order to have a baby "the normal way" that then involves several months of staying in the NICU on a vent because their super-premie son can't breathe without mechanical help.
I just -- really, really don't get this.