How do you tell children they were born by surrogate?

Well not on national TV.

Adrienne Maloof has ended her friendship with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills costar, Brandi Glanville for blurting out on camera that her twins were born by surrogate.

This was common knowledge for people that knew her but her children didn’t know and Maloof is angry. Maloof’s boys are six years old and we began to wonder, when is a good time to tell your children and how do you tell them?

Surrogacy is growing as a popular choice for infertile couples to grow their families and the discussion of surrogacy will eventually have to be discussed with the surrogate mother’s own children as well as the children born via surrogacy.

According to Judith Kottick, a licensed social worker, you want to tell your children their birth story early so it’s not a shock as in the case of Maloof. There are even children’s books written especially to help the story of surrogacy births like, “Hope & Will Have a Baby: The Gift of Surrogacy,” by Irene Celcer.

Another mom who used a surrogate mother told her child from day one. Jan Zoretich said she told her children stories at night and just included it in story time.

By far the sweetest explanation we heard came from Melissa Bressman who told her three-year old; “The doctor took a piece of Daddy and took a piece of Mommy and put it inside someone else because my tummy was broken” (Rimer, 2009).

We certainly sympathize with Maloof for the way her twin boys learned their birth story. We encourage parents to take the advice of Kottick and tell the birth story sooner rather than later.