Venture capitalist mom wreaks vengeance upon surrogate for stillbirth

A wealthy couple has launched a legal crusade against their former surrogate in retaliation for the stillbirth of their son, whom they claim the surrogate "kidnapped and killed" — and the story is truly jawdropping.

Key Takeaways:

• Jorge Valdeiglesias and Cindy Bi hired two surrogates to have an artificial version of twins — one boy and one girl.

• While the girl was born with no issues, the surrogate carrying their son experienced a stillbirth in the third trimester.

• Bi blames the surrogate and has launched a million-dollar legal crusade against her.

• The story is another example of how surrogacy dehumanizes and commodifies both the surrogates carrying babies and the children they carry.

The Backstory:

According to Wired, Cindy Bi met her husband, Jorge Valdeiglesias, in 2016. Bi, a venture capitalist, is older than he is, but told him on her first date that her age (36) didn't matter, because she had already frozen her eggs.

Six years later, the couple was ready to have children, but Bi had no interest in trying to carry them herself. They wanted boy and girl twins, but because doctors advised against a twin pregnancy due to the health risks that can arise, they decided to hire two surrogates. Soon, they were matched with one.

When describing the surrogate to Wired (despite a restraining order against her and a confidentiality agreement barring her from mentioning the surrogate), Bi said:

She was perfect. Tall, healthy, young, good job. I showed her off to my friends. The only thing I was concerned with was she’s a single mom, but I saw past it.

The surrogate, named only as the alias "Rebecca Smith" in the article, was the single mother of a seven-year-old son at the time she entered into a surrogacy arrangement; other sources have stated that Smith is a former pro-athlete. Smith said she wanted to help other couples find the joy in parenting that she had. Her pregnancy with her son had been normal, other than the fact that she did not appear pregnant until far into the third trimester.

Crossing Boundaries

Smith became pregnant with the couple's one male embryo, and their relationship started off well. But when Smith began bleeding early in the pregnancy, she learned that Bi had shared the information online in Facebook groups, including her medical test results and details that were enough to identify Smith. This reportedly violated their contract.

Surrogacy is riskier for both women and babies than most people realize

Then, halfway through the pregnancy, Smith got a new job; while the surrogacy agency said the new employer's health insurance would pay for Smith's medical bills, that turned out to be incorrect. It caused a lot of stress between Bi and Smith, with an irate Bi going after the surrogacy agency.

In December, Bi sent Smith over 50 text messages in one day about the insurance situation.

That same day, Smith felt liquid leaking from her body, and she went to the emergency room. She was 26 weeks pregnant. Doctors said her water hadn't broken, but Bi began pushing Smith to sign more forms, seemingly giving her the power to make medical decisions for Smith.

Smith tried taking all the precautions she could, drinking a lot of water and only sleeping on her side, but by 29 weeks, her water broke. She was admitted to the hospital and received IV antibiotics to ward off infection, and steroids to help the baby's lungs. She would have to remain in the hospital until he was born.

Accusations and a tragic loss

While Bi appeared supportive when speaking with Smith, she reportedly made accusations against her on social media. This included a breach-of-contract accusation, saying Smith should have notified her before accepting a new job. And Bi became suspicious of Smith because her stomach remained small, and she felt that her son, Leon, wasn't estimated to be in a high-enough growth percentile.

“Small belly by itself, I brushed off,” Bi said. “30th, water leak, small belly, is Leon being suffocated and become defective already?”

At 30 weeks, Smith woke up to the news that the baby no longer had a heartbeat. Her placenta had detached from the uterine wall — a placental abruption — which left baby Leon deprived of oxygen. Smith had to go into emergency surgery and almost died.

Long-term Canadian study: Surrogates have 3x severe illness rate compared to natural pregnancies

Although she was heartbroken to have lost the baby, Smith had no idea things were going to get worse.

Bi did not want to talk to her, but Smith sent an e-mail expressing her sadness about the loss. “I will forever carry the memory of your baby boy, how his favorite place to kick/punch was my right rib and how he danced up a storm whenever Ed Sheeran came on," she wrote.

The Details:

Bi told Wired she wants Smith jailed, and accuses her of intentionally taking actions to kill baby Leon.

“I want the surrogate to be known for what she did, to be set as an example,” Bi said. “I hope she goes to jail.”

Bi told the surrogacy agency that "our contract specified a ‘well-baby’ that didn’t die," and then demanded the escrow stop paying Smith or reimbursing her for medical expenses.

Bi accused Smith of having a lot of "unsafe sex," of letting her "adult-sized" seven-year-old child sleep in bed with her (probably kicking her in the stomach, according to Bi), and even of intentionally trying to give birth early so she could get compensation sooner. It seems that some of these ideas took root after Bi consulted psychics, who led her to believe Smith "ha[d] to something to hide."

“If it were not for all the hard evidence, it’s too shocking to believe [Rebecca Smith] did what she did to kill my son,” Bi wrote on Facebook, using Smith's real name.

Emi Nietfeld wrote at Wired:

“I am the victim here,” Bi told me repeatedly. Being a “single mom,” she said, “doesn’t give you the right to kill another son. You don’t have that victim card to play.” She was almost screaming when she said it.

Bi explains over and over her belief that surrogates hold all of the power. There are far more intended parents than surrogates—between three and 10 times as many—and IPs are, as Bi put it online, in “such a disadvantaged position.”

Once a GC has the embryo inside of them, they can harm the baby. Therefore, IPs are at their whim.

Wired added, "Perhaps a kind friend could have suggested to Bi that there were other explanations" for the stillbirth. "Instead, Bi had a set of legal adversaries and a supportive echo chamber."

Bi's husband told the outlet he doesn't blame Smith for their son's death (he blames the hospital) but said "the litigation is '[Bi's] grieving process.'” 

Harassment and Retaliation

Bi's harassment of Smith increased. Here's a short list:

• Bi sent a photo of baby Leon's corpse to Smith's seven-year-old son's iPad. (Read that again.)

• Bi posted online about Smith, and the well-connected, wealthy people surrounding Bi began calling for Smith to be arrested or to lose custody of her young son, with some even joining in to try to dig up dirt on Smith. Smith became suicidal and terrified for her and her son's safety.

• Bi emailed Smith's employer alleging insurance fraud, causing the employer to revoke insurance coverage for Smith's medical bills, potentially bankrupting Smith. Bi also reported Smith to a federal agency, alleging fraud.

• Bi texted Smith "a screenshot of a Facebook post about another GC who’d had an abruption at almost 32 weeks—but that GC had called 911 and the baby had lived."

• "Called the FBI 12 times."

• "Reported Smith, SAI, the hospital, and Clarity escrow to more than a dozen state and federal regulators and numerous professional organizations."

• "Posted Smith’s full name, photo, employer, mortgage license number, son’s first name, and a link to her address."

• When Smith changed jobs, Bi contacted that employer "saying Smith had been fired for fraud and lied on her application."

“The only goal she had was to destroy my life,” Smith wrote in a court document. No matter what explanations Smith gave for Bi's many accusations, it never seemed to be enough.

Smith bled for a month after the stillbirth and emergency surgery for blood loss (which nearly took her life), and went back to work once she was medically cleared to do so.

The Other Surrogate

Bi's other surrogate, Chelsea Sanabria, gave Bi the daughter she required. But in the process, Sanabria also experienced catastrophic placental complications and required an emergency hysterectomy to save her life due to placenta previa and placenta accreta.

But Bi had described that surrogacy situation to Wired as an easy one. It wasn't so easy for Sanabria, who lost more than 5 liters of blood and her future fertility.

Medical records evealed that Bi and Valdeiglesias both have family histories of pregnancy complications, including gestational diabetes and premature birth. The placenta is grown from the embryo itself, meaning it was made from Bi and Valdeiglesias' DNA. But the couple failed to inform either surrogate of this medical history, and it is possible they may conceal it if they pursue surrogacy for a third time — something they are currently considering, all while they have hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding debt for their attorneys.

Why It Matters:

Surrogacy is the ultimate act of dehumanization, and this story is one of the more shocking examples. Bi apparently has recommended surrogacy to her friends; at least one of them told Wired there should be a "database of wombs" at parents' disposal so they can select surrogates by their characteristics — after, of course, they've used IVF to select their designer children as well.

Smith has filed a restraining order against Bi and has also written about her horrific experience. “Imagine a journey being treated like a human incubator and not like a person,” she said. “Imagine a journey where the intended parents leave you to pay all of the medical bills.”

It's not hard to imagine; this is surrogacy, and it is human exploitation.

Go Deeper:

Smith isn't the only surrogate to be objectified and mistreated after entering into a surrogacy contract. Read more at the links below:

Surrogate mom claims intended parents abandoned their baby during pregnancy

Surrogate pressured to abort after cancer diagnosis: ‘The fathers wanted a death certificate’

Surrogate mother who was pressured to abort sues for custody

Couple made surrogate abort their baby at 20 weeks after she had an alcoholic drink