Author: Simon Hill

About a year ago I was approached by a documentary production company, who were producing a documentary on different types of families from the UK, going through the surrogacy process. They had a straight couple, a gay couple and were looking for an individual gay man as well.

The company asked me to take part. At first, I was like ‘no, not really interested,’ and then when I mentioned it to my project manager he said “well, they can pay a lot of money”. Surrogacy is an expensive business, so I was like ‘okay, for the money’. Time past, I met them and we did some filming, but when it came to the crunch there was no money available – small production company etc… Then my first surrogate and transfers didn’t work out, so the whole thing fizzled out.

Nine months later, I had a new (and my current) surrogate and was getting ready for the next transfer. The production company contacted me and said, “well things have changed, it would just be about your journey now”. I ignored it for a bit and then thought about it in detail. Obviously, it would expose my child and me to national coverage (it’s for Channel 4), and, potentially lead to ridicule, humiliation and social media trolling (just look at the recent McCain oven chips ad for families, featuring a gay couple part way through). However, I also work in media relations and marketing. Do you know how difficult it is to get coverage or even to get prolonged coverage on an issue? For example, last year I led a big charity campaign on an emotive ongoing issue. We got the TV news, radio, press, and had a launch in the House of Commons. For one day there was a ‘buzz’ and then apart from the charity’s own community, it essentially died away. My own professional experiences like this, built up over many years balance the negatives that spring to mind. Apart from a ‘buzz’ over a day or two, what’s the worse that could happen?

I guess the realisation for me, is that this isn’t an issue about being on TV, it’s about how you belong to your wider family or friends and the values you jointly hold. To draw a correlation with my own situation, I read somewhere over the last week that the couple in the McCain oven chip ad was now saying “what a mistake it was’ to be involved in the ad”. McCain has stood by the ad, and I agree with McCain. If my charity campaign experience from last year has taught me one thing, it is that too have acceptance in the wider world, an issue must be normalised or ‘everyday,’ and to achieve this, it must be ‘visual’, on TV, on the high street, at school and in workplaces. The McCain ad has helped to normalise surrogacy in my view.

However, if I was a betting man, I would bet that the couple in the McCain ad were getting the most ‘pain’ from their parents, friends and relatives, not the man down the road or the lady in the supermarket; although the online abuse is what the media has reported about. We can all ignore Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for a couple of weeks, but we can’t run from our parents, relatives or immediate friends. (These are of course assumptions as I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with the McCain ad couple.)

I draw the correlation with the couple in Manchester because of my own family’s vociferous and I think hysteric reactions to my own filming situation. Again, it comes back to my mother. In part three, I wrote about how my mother reacted, from: “Why do this now, you’re too young” (I was 38 at the time), to a discussion about the baby’s gender, name and how I would cope. In light of this, I approached the filming discussion with her, with a touchy-feely build up. It was no good though. Despite working with the film crew for six months, having recorded video diaries and sense checking with cousins first, the result was more hysteria. Unfortunately, this time we had reached a ‘bridge too far’. Effectively my father told me that I had put their marriage at risk and my brother’s mental health was becoming unmanageable. If I was going to continue agreeing to film, it would be without the support of my parents and brother, and we would stop speaking. No amount of my professional experience or helpful insight from the production crew could change this. I spent two weeks in abject family hell.

My mother went on about how surrogacy was unnatural and how we couldn’t tell the neighbours. We were going to lie and say that the child’s mum is in the States that we’d gone through a separation and I was left with the child. (Question, which is worse in modern Britain: a child in a single parent family through divorce or through surrogacy? Also, see column seven about what we had agreed.) She said, it would be the talk of the town and that we would be humiliated, abused and shouted at, day-after-day-after-day. And then, how could you raise a baby in that situation? What’s in the best interests of your child? (Well in my opinion, not lying for a start and making everything as normal as possible.)

My brother was next, but what was worse, was that for him, this was all about me being gay. “You’re not some gay rights warrior, you have no right to raise gay issues on national television, who do you think you are’”.

I came out at 18. I’ve been humiliated for being gay in an international sales meeting, on the train, at work and in public places. At 20, I ran the LGBT society at university and was a public figurehead at uni for LGBT people and issues. I was an organiser of Yorkshire Pride at 23, and, for virtually every year since 18, I have marched in gay pride parades in London and Birmingham. So yes, I feel an important personal duty about raising gay rights.

Sadly, the fact of the matter is, that throughout all the filming so far, I’ve barely mentioned the word gay once; because I’m happy that my child will be as a result of surrogacy, but I too was scared to say that I was gay on TV. So, on the one hand, I do everything I think I can, reasonably, to raise and support gay rights, whilst considering the people around me. On the other hand, those I don’t shove it in the face of (my mother and brother), are some of the most vociferous opponents of who I am and what I choose to do with my life. Ultimately I question whether their values and my own match and although outside of being gay our values align pretty much, being gay for me is a fundamental part of who I am.

“Thinking about my unborn child, who this is most important to, I will be her father. I will try to be a role model, I will look after her, take care of her, indeed devote my life to her. But, that includes the fact that her father is gay.”

Thinking about my unborn child, who this is most important to, I will be her father. I will try to be a role model, I will look after her, take care of her, indeed devote my life to her. But, that includes the fact that her father is gay. There will be bumps in the road ahead because of this, however discreet I am about it. And, if you think about it, the haters will always hate and even if my child was not born through surrogacy or had a gay dad, other kids may pick on her hair colour, her weight or the way she talks. These are just things that we all have to struggle with in life.

Which brings me back to my own reasoning for having a family of my own. The most important thing in life is family and friends. So a duty to gay rights and a fundamental part of my life once again must take a hit, so that I continue to belong to my family. In reality, I’m furious, want to scream and shout, because my being gay and my choice to have a family is reluctantly supported by my family. I feel that they have placed their own personal needs before backing me (n.b. what we say to the neighbours).

The film company has invested time and money, understandably want to continue, but I’ll draw it to a close. The opportunities for both my own life from the pithy 15 minutes of fame, to writing or talking at public events about gay surrogacy, will have to be placed to one side while I shelve this in order to remain part of my family. (My writing name is a pseudonym.)

As you have probably guessed from the above I am expecting a daughter, so with family and friends, I have been out buying stuff from a ‘travel system’ to clothing, bottles and all sorts of stuff. This has been fun and made things more real.

Indeed, I now have seven week’s till I fly to the states and eight weeks until my child is born. The flights are booked, an Airbnb condo booked, and my parents (gotta love em) will fly out as well to ‘help’ me for two weeks while we get a birth certificate and passport. I have then agreed to move in with them for three or four months. Now, however, a little part of me desperately wants to move as far away as possible from them and start anew as quickly as possible.  It was my mother’s insistence for a female influence and offers of help that brought me back. Well considering the implications of what I have to deal with, I think three months after we come back to the UK, I’ll want to be at a safe distance from them.

Finally, I just want to add a note about the NCT course I discussed in my last column. I did get back in touch and the local coordinator was apologetic, so I’ll keep the faith, get over my reluctance and sign up to a course.

Looking back at what I have published in this column, I realise that it’s now been two years since my first article (2015); and indeed it’s been five years (2012) since I started this process. I can remember being told at the time, “you’re in your mid-thirties (by my mother and others) why can’t you wait till you’re a bit older?” Well, little did I know that it would take five years from when my ex and I started to investigate to actually having a child. On the flip side, ironically, I now have conversations about the discrimination I will face being an older parent, as most new mums are in their 20s and I will be 40.

So, I am the proud bearer of good news! In my last column I finished by saying that I hope to report back, with news of a successful transfer and indeed I can. It’s not twins, but an embryo transfer took place back in March and having been grown a bit in the laboratory beforehand, the embryo has developed into a foetus. According to my pregnancy app, this week it is the size of a typical chicken breast and about 5oz in weight, developing its fingerprints and has recognisable features. The nervous system is developing and my baby’s ears have developed so that s/he (we don’t know the sex yet) can hear.

Two weeks ago I sent my surrogate a voucher and a list of classical music to download and play through some tummy speakers. My parents have also recorded nursery rhymes, which we will send to my surrogate shortly. My surrogate, however, enjoys hip hop and rap, so I may well have a MOBO music lover in my son or daughter!

We are also heading ‘through the woods’, as the first trimester (week 12) completed six weeks ago, and the ultrasound imagery taken at the time suggests no abnormalities of the foetus. I now have an expected date of arrival in early December 2017.

In some ways I feel really disconnected from the whole process. I am a whole continent away from my surrogate and all of those things (good and bad) that other new dads experience aren’t happening for me. It’s almost like a surreal dream. I speak with my surrogate once a week and we are connected on Facebook, but the emotional build up and the build up with family and friends is not happening for me. So I feel strangely disconnected.

Part of this disconnection is down to me and my circumstances. The tangled lives that we lead, mean that mine is not as well prepared as it could be. Having agreed not to come out to wider family and in the area where my parents live when I was 18, (I’m only really out in London), my parents and I have been having conversations about how we explain my situation in their local community, to their friends and to my wider family (cousins, aunts, uncles etc). The fear that I feel is immense.

It’s like I’m coming out all over again. That carefully edited and compartmentalised part of my life which is my parental home environment where I grew up, is suddenly in peril. Here’s my current thinking: Having already come out once and the world is very different from where it was 22 years ago when I was 18, I’ve said: we won’t lie, there is no secret girlfriend in the states, I haven’t been deserted by the mother and I am gay and going through surrogacy. It’s mainly because I can’t lie and build lie upon lie, upon lie. With a child in my arms to care for and look after, it’s too much to think about a back story every time. As a result, this was the topic of some debate for a week or two between me and my parents.

The West Country is not a liberal place. My local MP voted against gay marriage and only last year I was verbally discriminated against in my workplace in the local office in Reading, because I’m gay. I’m seriously starting to question if moving back here (because of the support of parents and family) will be the right decision. Only at the weekend the daughter of a neighbour talking to one of her friends across the street said, ‘my mum says he’s funny’ and she didn’t say it in a ‘ha ha, he makes me laugh’ kind of way.

So, I’ve agreed with my parents that following my 40 birthday, I will come out (again!) to my wider family and explain at the same time that I will become a dad. What will be, will be: ‘Que sera sera’. To add to this I need to hold down a job and continue to battle through the surrogacy process.

Speaking of discrimination one my female friends who strongly supports me, suggested that I contact the National Childbirth Trust ‘The UK’s largest charity for parents’. She had taken ante-natal and parental courses with them and is a huge fan. In this sense I’m like any other parent to be, I know nothing and could do with some help. So I went to the website https://www.nct.org.uk – they advertise stuff like a first 1000 days parent support. I found a course and applied. Within about 15 minutes I had a reply from the local co-ordinator. Bubbly and excited, we exchanged e-mails discussing local courses, costs, etc. Until about the fifth e-mail, “whose your partner?” was the question. ‘Um I don’t have one, I’m a gay dad to be going through surrogacy’.

The tone of the response was muted and effectively said, ‘I’m not sure that the course we have discussed is right for you. You’re welcome to attend but we think that a one-on-one session in your home would be “what people usually offer”’.

I noted a change of tone from first person to third person. I have to say I feel really, really let down. Why do I need a special course at home? I’d like to turn up at the course I chose, be welcomed and accepted as a new parent to be. Instead, through the carefully worded language, it’s being suggested that I can join in but it’s better at home because that’s ‘what people usually offer’ – people? Who are ‘people’? I look forward to being continually being discriminated against. I’ve yet to decide if I will try to continue with the NCT.

In a couple of week’s time, we will start the legal process for a pre-birth order in the states to hand over rights to the baby from the surrogate to me before birth. I now also need to think about writing a Will and engaging a UK solicitor – I have one in mind. I was under the impression that there is now single parent, ‘parental orders’ but having spoken to a friend who is also a single dad he seemed to think that they were not in use yet. A single parent parental order will be much easier than getting an effective legal decision or the onerous journey of adoption.

That’s my journey to date, I will update you all closer to December.

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My hiatus is over and having wondered into the foothills near the road to becoming a father, I have now returned to the straight and narrow. Recently three things have happened which have had a profound effect on my journey to becoming a father:

It has now been 13 months since the last embryo transfer with my (now ex-) surrogate failed. I am pleased to be able to report that finally, I have a new surrogate, the paperwork is signed, and we will try for an embryo transfer in March 2017. If successful, it will have been 25 months since I signed the original surrogacy paperwork.

Secondly, not one but two of my close friends have died, literally a week apart. I went to the first funeral a week ago and will attend the second funeral in two weeks’ time. In my third column, I spoke about the reaction by close family and friends. Well, one of the friends who has now died, was one of the original three who was virulently against my becoming a father. I hadn’t spoken to him for just over a year because of this. I was hoping to re-ignite our friendship (17 years to that time) once a baby was born. I can’t tell you how sad I was and how regretful I am that I had not had the opportunity to make up with him before he died. I sit here now as I write with a heavy heart.

To balance this, the other friend who has died was very much for me becoming a father. He had a large party when he knew he had a week or two to live, there were over 50 people and it meant that I saw him five days before he died. Again, our friendship had lasted 15 years and I was able to say thank you for the loyalty and happiness that he had brought to my life.

Following these two deaths, I’ve recently been reflecting on what’s important to me and what sort of person I am. Without the news of the new surrogate signing contracts, I had become very depressed. I still have a good job, a now older BMW, and live in a new house which I have bought (still dreaming of two children). But, my friends’ deaths really made me reflect on what I think is important in life, which remains: family and friends, the people that we surround ourselves with. For me, this continues to justify my reasoning for starting a family.

Speaking of family and friends, my third profound effect is that having spent Sunday afternoon walking with my mother, as we got to the car, she said to me “and now if you can provide me with a grandson, I will be very happy”. Back in column three, I wrote how my mother reacted one afternoon and ever since it’s been a tricky balancing act to keep mum onside. Gone are the hysterics management and my mother has taken time, but now seems to be coming around to the idea of me having a child. I am very thankful for this.

I certainly feel that I am ‘paying my dues’. I have kept hold of my job in some tricky situations, started to build a home ready for a child, and am now making financial sacrifices as I start to save £1000 a month, in order to meet the increased costs of the new surrogate. For example, this year I will be 40. When I was 35 I rented a house in Torre Del Lago in Italy and for two weeks friends flew in and out. On my 35^th birthday, we ate by the lakeside, followed by open-air opera. Saving a £1000 a month means that I won’t be hiring a house in Italy this year. Instead, I am now on the path laid out by my life coach, £1000 a month for the next year covering surrogacy costs and once a child is born, child care for three or four years.

I look forward with hope to sharing with you the success of an embryo transfer at the start of April 2017.

I am currently in a hiatus, waiting for the next steps to materialise. My journey began a year and a half ago when I signed paperwork agreeing to spend around $110,000 on a series of fixed payment contracts for surrogacy. After four months we found an egg donor and literally grabbed the first surrogate who said ‘yes’.

But having been through two egg transfers during December last year and February this year, it’s not worked out as expected. The eggs didn’t ‘take’ and I’m now without a surrogate and still no baby.

I wanted to cover choosing your agencies, egg donor and surrogate, with the benefit of hindsight. Essentially I was naive and new when I signed up.

In the beginning, all the agencies involved were happy and chummy. They put on a united front when I first met them. The surrogacy agency wanted just over $20,000, the project management agency around $10,000 and the fertility clinic just over $40,000.

The first issue was the egg donor. The fertility clinic had a reduced price list as this was essentially an add-on service for them. Donors can range from $5k to $45k, from a teenager paying for college tuition (as mine is) to a winning athlete with Harvard brains.

To keep costs low I chose to work with the clinic’s list, rather than an outside agency. Even at both ends of the scale there is tough competition and quite often a queue. You can spend a week vetting, set your heart on a surrogate only to be told ‘they were taken off the list four days ago’.

Eventually, you wise up and vet, consider and decide overnight. I have a feeling that there are a number of ‘regular’ donors and those who aren’t chosen quickly have their details recycled. Mine turned out to have a recessive gene for a digestive problem. I only discovered this at the 11th hour as I was about to sign the paperwork when an e-mail arrived with some ‘additional information’. It certainly was not in the database or discussion we had with the doctor. But, having had a gene scan when I gave sperm, the doctor concluded that it’s a minuscule possibility and therefore did not matter. Having waited months to find and bag a donor I just signed on the dotted line.

The next issue was the surrogacy agency. As a single man, using the United States as the place to having a baby through surrogacy; I need an unmarried surrogate, who has given birth before. This in itself is fairly difficult to find, especially in the genuine ‘I want to help someone have children’ context.

Not a problem, my project management agency said, we’ve done this before. Perhaps I should have asked, how many times?

However, since finding my first surrogate and the transfers failing, it’s proving extremely difficult to get an unmarried surrogate who has given birth…

I feel that my surrogacy agency has lost interest. We agreed to speak or e-mail each week.

Now it’s very easy for three weeks to pass and no contact, indeed now in July, it’s six months since we decided to part ways with my ex-surrogate and only one possible surrogate was available and she went very quickly.

In Part 4, I wrote about ethics and enforceable law, but I did not discuss the lack of industry regulatory framework. The laws are ‘new’ and there is no industry regulatory framework with an industry association setting out good practice. This lack of best practice is painful even now as I’ve paid upfront for a contract which says if we don’t deliver, you can’t sue…
So legally my surrogacy agency can drag its feet and wait for me to get frustrated and bored before ending the contract, effectively taking my money for nothing. How do you keep someone who doesn’t have to be interested, who you’ve already paid, interested?

When I first investigated this, I was told, ‘You could do this without a project management agency.’ At first, they did everything and are lovely people who emotionally and insightfully support me. I chose to use them as they already know the issues I will encounter and what to do, sparing me a myriad of pitfalls. However, as they are not now speaking with my surrogacy agency, it means I’m doing the heavy lifting anyway. Instead, they have suggested new surrogacy agencies and workarounds, but these cost more money and following Brexit, the pound isn’t what it was. So I pray each day that my surrogacy agency will keep the faith and come up trumps. So, looking back at it, I think that when choosing a project management agency, the differentiators for a project management agency will be experienced in your chosen country and its laws, plus their costs.

In terms of lawyers, although surrogacy is a specialism in terms of the details of the law, standard contracts can get edited.
A law firm may offer litigation expertise to support their contract work, but this will come at an additional cost when the time comes to use this service. Again experience and costs are the differentiators here (such as, how many clients, how many contracts, how many times have the contracts been challenged? What was the result?).

In terms of clinic, this is more nuanced as many clinics have for decades been helping infertile straight couples with surrogacy. I chose my clinic based on the opinion of another clinic. When doing the rounds at one of the shows, my friends and I worked through a few clinics stands. At one the lady talked about the clinic stand ‘over there’ and her face lit up when referring to the type of organisation they were, their history etc. It was only a minute or so, and aimless chatter, but it was enough of an unconscious referral to convince me that they would be right for me.

So, when looking for agencies, there aren’t many questions I’d ask differently. My circumstances were restricted to those who offered a fixed price mainly. However, rules of thumb are: experience in the country you want to give birth in, costs, the people (how do you fit with their staff) and the organisation’s values. If you can answer these questions positively, then you should be in good hands.

In terms of egg donor and surrogate you will need to balance consideration and vetting with rapid decisions against tight timelines.

Legal and ethical issues are the less exciting, but a very important part of surrogacy. I thought this would be a very dry article until my recent experience. Despite my research I was in for a surprise.

‘Legals’ as they are known, underpin any surrogacy process and UK law is restrictive. They cover everything from the payment of money to birth certificate names and legal rights. Implications can include a criminal record. At one end of the scale of ‘success’ you will find: a gay celebrity who has found a friendly lesbian, a clinic and co-parenting arrangements which seem very snug. At the other end are horror stories such as an everyday gay man having no access rights and having to pay maintenance for a child they will never see. This makes surrogacy in the UK decidedly unreliable. When dealing with bringing a child into this world, not to mention the money involved, for me, the more certainty the better.

So the ‘legals’ are important. It also brings into stark contrast where to look outside the UK: Ukraine is still a country with a subdued war zone, Thailand has just banned gay couples using surrogacy, Mexico has poor regulation, and places such as Russia and Georgia have very grey areas legally. The question isn’t so much what’s written in law, as what can be enforced and by whom?

People’s actions are governed by the perceived consequences of their actions, rather than what is written in law.

A second issue that is closely linked is ethics. So often it will be a culture’s ethical perceptions which are then interpreted into law. For example, who is ‘mum’ and if/what role does ‘mum’ play in a child’s upbringing? How important is it to have a female involved in child care? At one end of the childcare scale, you can point to studies which show that actually childcare is about time and attention given. Two men can be more capable than a heterosexual couple because they may give more time and attention to the child(ren). At the other end of the scale are the views of an everyday person based on their own experience (dad worked and mum raised the kids). We are all still influenced by our cultural history as this forms part of our identity. To break this is to go against the cultural mould, that is, to be an outsider. In the UK out gay men are used to being outsiders, but this takes it to a whole new level. This type of ‘outside’ is also where casual bigotry and sexism creep in.

A gay couple I know went to a children’s party with their kids. A friendly mum was chatting to one and then said hello to the other. She began by asking dad #2 who he was. He said he was dad as well. Embarrassed silence followed when she realised what the situation was. (This was a kid’s party in trendy south-east London. Imagine what it’s like somewhere a little less cosmopolitan?) In this respect for me, there is some relief, as I won’t have to explain who I am. ‘Mum’ will forever be, ‘in America’.

Further ethical considerations include the implications for the surrogate. Emotional attachment has long been an issue. For example, a cardinal rule is not to let the surrogate breast feed directly. Breast feeding releases a hormone which binds a child to the milk giver. As a result because of this and similar issues, if you want to have a female who is both surrogate and egg donor you have to go to remote locations. The stark realisation that there are two females involved in surrogacy seemed surprising to the gay friends I’ve told. This means that ‘mum’ will be two people, a genetic mother and a birth mother. It makes it more clinical and easier to handle emotionally, but then you start to question the motivations of those involved. It usually links back to money and once money is involved, then it is legal enforcement, not what is written that is so important. Find yourself in a clinic in Russia where a genetic surrogate wants to keep the baby and disappears, and you can imagine the implications.

For this reason, evidence of lengthy ongoing practice (say over five or ten years) plus a legal framework which has been tried and tested in a culture which is sympathetic is very important. If you perform this ‘test’, it should be applied to both the culture, its regulatory framework and also to the fertility clinic, surrogacy agency and law firm. Remember, it only matters if enforcement has to be taken, but who will have your back and how, if enforcement is taken?

As a result I opted for the United States. It is the most expensive choice, but has a strong and experienced regulatory framework in the states of California and Nevada. Despite this, there are still issues. The concern is no longer ethical issues, but enforcement issues.

When I bought my legals, I bought an ‘unlimited’ package from a law firm in the United States, as part of my overall deal. This provided advice and a legally enforceable contract, not pro-active negotiation or litigation. This came to be significant, eight months after signing up to the surrogacy deal. We were at the stage of drawing up the surrogate’s contract, based on agreed terms. It was adjusted by me and sent to my surrogate. A week before the deadline, the contract returned. My surrogate, the lovely lady I met in the states, wanted more money.

Another agency had approached her, offering more. A recent scandal saw a surrogacy agency go under taking their surrogates’ money.

My surrogate wanted more money plus a buffer of $10,000 in the escrow account. Suddenly my bill had increased by $20,000, just a week before we were due to exchange contracts.

My law firm effectively washed their hands and said ‘just accept it’. There was no attempt to fight my corner. If at this stage, they weren’t fighting my corner, then what happens if we get into contract enforcement? All of the surrogacy agency’s talk of ‘doing it for a good cause’ washed away.

I questioned if I could trust my surrogate. Also, as my father said, “you understand a law firm once the going gets tough” -and mine couldn’t run fast enough. In the end I negotiated with my surrogate. I agreed to some increases, and we signed a contract. To really add to my issues, my law firm got my surrogate to sign a different copy of the contract to the one I had notarised. We have yet to resolve this. I now have two surrogate contracts each with different signed parties. Enforcement could be an issue.

The US maybe more regulated but the issues are subtler. Good strong communication by all parties is needed.

Next time I’ll look at: how you choose the agencies involved, the egg donor, and surrogate. Who do you pick and why? Please also help me to raise funds, any contribution is gratefully received: http://www.gofundme.com/simonhill

About five years ago I went on holiday to Benidorm. I met a gay couple from Berkshire, one of whom had been a long term employee at one of the world’s largest banks.

After a few nights we got very drunk and started one of those deep conversations about life. Recounting his time at the bank and his life since, he said ‘until you’ve really encountered some s**t, you don’t really appreciate life’. His encounter was leaving the bank he had worked for, for 15 years, during the recession. It made me think about what I really appreciate in life, the proverbial that life had thrown at me, if I really appreciated what I had and what sort of person I am. In the last issue I asked, what does £1000 mean to you, and now I ask, what sort of person do you think you are and what’s important to you?

The first person I spoke to about it was one of my oldest (15 years and counting) best friends. His reaction was a mixture of shock, anger at what he saw was my irresponsibility and disbelief.

My answer at the time, to myself, was multi-faceted. Firstly I have been through st: from ten years at boarding school from which I will never recover, but which essentially has defined me as the person I am today (it’s hard to deny what you are); through to significant but minor stuff like: being so poor I couldn’t pay for food in the supermarket and being on the verge of bankruptcy and losing everything for several weeks in 2008. On the plus side, I’ve come from a very privileged background: I was one of the 7% that went to boarding school, educated alongside royalty. Growing up I never went without, had plenty of opportunities and a happy childhood until 8. I’ve worked in the profession I wanted to work in, and today I am a Director at both the business I work for and a charity. So, I’d say I’ve been through some st and what’s most important to me is family and friends. Everything else is important, but a nice to have, because when the proverbial hits the fan, what is important? For me my family and friends aren’t just complex, but are probably the most important part of my life.

This was part of my reasoning behind having family when ‘we’ started to evaluate what we wanted in life (with my now, ex-partner). So, having been to the shows and conferences, I began to explore the topic with friends and family. You would think that the prospect of having children would fill friends and relatives with joy, hope, happiness and good will. But, in some cases, not a bit of it.

The first person I spoke to about it was one of my oldest (15 years and counting) best friends. His reaction was a mixture of shock, anger at what he saw was my irresponsibility and disbelief. Having been to Tate Britain, we spent an hour perched on a wall where he preached about why I shouldn’t and couldn’t do it. So I knew then that if someone so very close to me, could react in such a way, that I would need careful management of everyone else.

Indeed as I hadn’t sold the house at the time, this was one of the reasons why I placed everything on hold until last year.

Based on that experience I have told very few friends and none of my extended family. Thankfully the reactions have been mixed from the positive (good for you, you can do it), to as I said, the negative. So far out of the ten individuals or couples I have told, seven have been supportive and three have been virulently against. My parents for their part swing from good to bad, and my brother is very supportive.

Understandably I’ve studied the negative reactions in some detail and I’ve come to conclusion that it is a mixture of worries and fear for the future, tied into the respondents own background issues, and worries about my capabilities. It’s also a reflection of the wider gay community. So often we are on the fringes of society and what binds us together can be what makes us different (and quite often cutting edge), but not what is considered ‘normal’. One of my friends who reacted negatively, was abused as a child and you could understand his worries about security for the children I would bring into the world. Another is older and never had the opportunity to have children and you can see his thoughts lined with regret and resentment. The third person of concern is my own mother.

My mother is the living embodiment of a conventional parent, and a 1950’s housewife. She left a job as a manager at International Computers in the 70s, married my father and life for her became having children, cooking, ironing and keeping the house clean. I have to give credit to my mother as she has a hatred of the last three, but as one of my friends said, entered into and stuck to, an agreement with my father, where they had clearly defined roles. She has raised two decent, productive, contributing members of society; despite the bumps along the way (my homosexuality and my brothers psychological crash with drugs).

Her reaction has been the most worrying. In part it’s down to the baggage my mother brings.

When I was young, we were due to have a sister, a child my mother dearly wanted. Unfortunately (now thanks to the genetic testing I have undertaken) we know that I and (therefore most probably) my mother carry a gene which contributes to miscarriages. My mother’s own miscarriage, is never spoken about and amazingly, the sheer pain after all these years is still there. So, one Saturday a mild conversation about choosing gender turned into a fraught conversation based on my mothers pain. (I’ve decided for that reason not to choose the gender.) On top of this my mother goes from highs to lows: “What names should we think about,” to, “I’m too old to raise a child,” and “How will you work with the crying at night”. The last is a decent point, but with the help of hefty pay from my job, I will be able to afford child care and expect to have time off following birth. I wish that my mother, who is usually so practical would offer calm, collected, thoughtful advice. Instead as with three of my friends I quite often have hysterics management. I now avoid the friends, one of whom I have stopped speaking to entirely and the other two rarely. In some ways it has accentuated what is important to me: family and friends.
Next time I want to take a helicopter view over the ‘legals’ and some of the ethical issues that prospective gay parents have, from: ‘who is mum’, to which jurisdiction, to sexism.

Please also help me to raise funds, any contribution is gratefully received: www.gofundme.com/simonhill

by Simon Hill | @SimonXHill

A man once told me a story about money, it went like this: The board of a FTSE 100 company is meeting at lunchtime. As they start to debate the next item, an investment of £10bn, there is a knock at the door, and Liz, the sandwich lady comes in. Picking out a sandwich, drink and crisps, the FD hands over a £5 note. “It’s £5.50, John”, says Liz. “Eh?!” John looks up, “It was £5 yesterday and has been since I’ve been here.” “Well”, says Liz, “prices have gone up and it’s now £5.50.” There then ensues a long debate over the price of sandwiches and subsidising the canteen. The debate ends; John looks up and says “Let’s vote, whose in favour of the investment?” All raise their hands and the business agrees to spend £10bn. The point is that it’s very easy to pay for something, when you don’t appreciate the amounts of money involved. But, when we are asked to pay for something which, we can relate back to time spent in our day job, it really brings home how much something costs.

Paying for surrogacy is a bit like the £10bn investment. It involves cutting edge science, which we have only heard about on TV and is paid for by sums of money we will only deal with a few times in our lives, let alone actually see laid out before us on a pallet. Add to this the emotional time and personal investment and it goes from being a risk to something we can’t fully get our heads around.

At the parenting conference we attended in August 2012 there was a presentation by an agency; let’s call it ‘Agency A’. At the end of the presentation, there were questions. One of the questions was, ‘how much is it’? To which the reply was, ‘about 100,000 dollars’. Clearly the speaker didn’t want to alienate his audience. A quick calculation of 1.5 dollars to the pound and it works out around £66,000. Hmm, I thought, £66,000 doesn’t seem so bad. That’s a quantifiable figure.

At the time I was also attending counselling. I asked my counsellor, how could I get £60,000? His response was quite clever. He told me to take a white sheet of A4, and half way up draw a line from left to right. Next he told me to mark a start point at the left edge of the line. Then he asked me, what I could afford to save a month? “About £1,000”, I said. “Okay,” he said, “£60,000 divided by £1,000 is 60. So that’s 60 months. At the right edge of the line mark your end point: month 60.” And there laid out before me was a five year timeline to pay for surrogacy. This way I was able to start to quantify what it might cost me to have a child. For £1000 a month I could: lunch every working day for £50 or go out each weekend and spend £200. What does £1000 mean to you? £60,000 is a lot of money.

Two years later, I started to investigate it further and in July of 2014 I agreed to meet Agency A. When I got to their offices, you could tell that there was money, but decorative taste was clearly harder to come by. I met a very nice lady who during the course of our conversation confirmed it was ‘about $100,000.’ She said to contact them once I had the money ready.

66 months is a very long time and I wanted to have children while I was in mid-life, so, I sold my house and moved in with friends. Three months later, following completion, I had £66,000 in the bank. I put £16,000 to one side for a new deposit and prepared to transfer £50,000 into dollars. It took a lot of thought. Was I really going to make this commitment? At this sort of price, even a slight fluctuation in the exchange rate could mean losing thousands of pounds. The pound had been at 1.7 dollars, now it was 1.64 dollars. Should I wait for it to go back up? I decided to take the plunge and get on with it. Today I am very thankful. The dollar got stronger a few weeks after and still today is trading around $1.50 to the pound. I could have lost out on a lot of dollars. For weeks after my father said to me “transfer it back, you will make two or three thousand pounds” –yes, but then I won’t have any dollars!

I contacted Agency A again and spoke with my proposed project manager. My ‘professional head’ kicked in, “I need to pin down the costs before I sign contracts,” I said. “Well,” he said, “we tell our couples to budget up to $150,000 just in case, but hopefully it’s less.” “Hang on a minute”, I replied, “that’s not $100,000”. Suddenly I had gone from $100,000, ‘up to $150,000.’ I now needed £100,000, not $100,000. However, I decided to push on and see what the details looked like. I asked to visit their offices once again to work through the different costs. “We still wouldn’t be able to give you firm costs” came back the reply.

READ THE ENTIRE Journey To Fatherhood series

I went through the outline costings, budgeting $119,000 and $130,000 for worst case. New costs were added, and the budget became $150,000 and worst case $170,000. Since selling the house I had gone from $100,000 to a worst case of $170,000 which couldn’t be guaranteed. It was all too much of a gamble for me. So I left it.

This gives you some idea of what I am up against. Transparency is available if you ask the right questions. But as this is such an emotional and new process, knowing the right questions is often not possible. In February this year I was offered a fixed price deal at $120,000. This gave me some surety and peace of mind. It is roughly £80,000 of which I already had £66,000, meaning I only had to find £15,000. The package included project management, surrogacy and fertility agency fees, egg donor fee, surrogate fee and US legals. All that remained were deductibles such as maternity clothing, three month maternity leave salary compensation (if applicable) and UK legals. Interestingly without the fixed fee deal I calculated these costs were about $153,000, not far from Agency A’s pricing. So I signed on the dotted line.

Today my costs are now closer to $138,000 (about £90,000). What’s changed is small additions to the fixed package, such as: add $2,000 for ‘unlimited’ US legals, $1,500 for a contract enabling your children to legally contact their egg donor, $5,000 for the surrogate salary compensation, deductibles increasing by $2,250, counselling $299, surrogate’s lawyer and travel $3,358. And still, I’m confused, e.g. is surrogate travel part of deductibles? No one seems to be able to tell me, least of all my project manager! So I rely on my own spreadsheet, which I regularly review. And now this means I will dip into the house deposit money.

As a result I now have a GoFundMe page. If you like my story please do contribute to my fundraising campaign, so that I don’t finish with too much debt to the detriment of raising my children. Any contribution is valuable to me, so please contribute what you can at: gofundme.com/simonhill.

Next time I want to cover off family and friends. We live inside very complex social networks and mine isn’t an exception to this, how do you tell friends and family? If you have any questions, please contact me on twitter.

@simonxhill

“Click”, and with that I had spent twenty thousand dollars.

But, I didn’t feel anything. Is this what the super-rich feel when they spend twenty thousand dollars, nothing? What if I did it again, would I feel ecstatic, excited at what was about to happen, a sheer sense of relief after all the months of agonising, or just more nothing? I still had four thousand five hundred pounds to spend on the surrogacy agency… At this rate, I might have to spend a lot more money before I felt something. If spending this type of money doesn’t garner a reaction I wondered, how much does?

The only other time I have spent this sort of money was when I bought my first house and had to put a deposit down. No, hang on, that was the bank of mum and dad, so actually, this is the first time I have spent this kind of money. Which sort of gives you an inkling of the kind of background and money that you need to have, to go through having your own baby as a gay man. It’s a bit like buying a house, except not as easy.

It all started some three years ago. I had met the love of my life: tall, blond, blue eyes and muscular, in a languid kind of way. In fact, easy on the eye, *Grrr* – if you know what I mean ;o) (Sadly he knew it too…) I’m no looker, so I have to try hard to get a man’s attention. He was easy to get along with and we sort of clicked. We met when I was having the car serviced. Having said hello on Grindr before (this was outside my usual haunts), and with time on my hands, I suggested we had a bite to eat. We started to meet up each weekend, then had the monogamy chat, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The first time we mentioned children was when we were talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. He wanted to work in finance, as for him it was like playing an instrument, music to his ears. I wanted to reach the top of my profession and one day get into politics. And then the ‘c’ word was mentioned. And what about having a family, children? I think it was me that said it. Lots of my friends agree that I have always talked about becoming a father. Both he and I were brought up in very traditional middle-class families, where, once we grew up, we would: meet a girl, get married, buy a house with a Labrador, park a Volvo in the drive and have 2.4 children. Well, obviously that plan hadn’t worked out for either of us. I had the house, a BMW, no pet, a new partner and was now thinking about children.

“Yes, I would” he said and we left it at that. I think a gay man’s biological clock does exist, but unlike a woman’s, it is slower and the alarm doesn’t sound until your mid-thirties. I think I only met someone once who was in their twenties, who wanted to have children. It was way off my radar. My twenties I spend shagging, clubbing, being thin, losing my hair, getting more muscular towards thirty and developing a career path. I lived in London, Manchester, Leeds (long summer nights spent in the courtyard next to Queens Court, steadily getting more intoxicated with the growing throng of gay men buzzing in the background, like a flock of birds preening on a South Atlantic Beach), London again, Bristol and the West Country. At the start of my thirties, I settled once more in London. I didn’t have as much sex as some, but perhaps a lot more than others. Now however, in my thirties, what I wanted was changing.

I didn’t want drink, sex and spending hours in an obligatory circle with friends in the middle of the dance floor till 5am. I wanted more ‘quality of life.’ I had reached a stage, where money wasn’t a struggle and more expensive holidays were the norm. (Think Italy, Barcelona, a Conde Nast Traveler top 100 hotel snuggled in the hills of Gran Canaria, half an hour from Playa Del Ingles.) I wanted to find a community (still do) a bit like Leeds, but down south, where I can pop for a pint after work and not just go through the endless cycle of work, home, bed, work, home, bed.

We came back from holiday in August and I saw an advert for the ‘Alternative Parenting Show’. I looked it up online and found out that it was at the Grand Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden. So, I suggested that we went along and have a look. Come late September, we headed out one summer Sunday through the tourists at Covent Garden tube, past the Mason’s Hall towards the Grand Connaught Rooms. As we got closer the butterflies in my stomach began to build. Unwanted thoughts started to enter my mind. “Oh no, we’re going to be identified as gay men in the middle of the day, out in the open!” and, “as a gay couple looking to start a family”. It felt like I was 18 and going through the process of coming out all over again. I had goose pimples and felt the hair standing up on my arms and back. As we approached the first step into the Grand Connaught Rooms, my mind shrieked out to, me, ‘run!’ Calm down I thought, I’m a 35 year old gay man and if I’m not old enough now to face life’s challenges, then, when will I be?

And that was how it started. Having children is a complex business, it is a journey of feeling. Until I started the process, my life was governed by hard fact and judgements based on outcomes. ‘If I want this, what will it cost me, what are the implications, how will this effect where I want to be, how will this affect those around me, what else do I need to do to make sure this happens?’ Thinking about having children, starting the process and getting underway for me, has been unfathomable, as it’s not possible to judge, quantify the impact, people’s reactions, expected financial outcomes when so much emotion is involved.

In Britain, as an LGBT community, we have attained so much, from equality in the eyes of the law for the age of consent through to marriage. However, the attainment of children and family life as well as established conventional norms, for what it is to be a gay family are still being designed and formed. In the next few issues, I would like to share with you my experience, following my own trail, as a gay man looking to have a baby through surrogacy. I will explore some of the key issues, such as: investigating where to start; the money; family, friends and your community; Health issues; politics and legal issues; and of course, the journey including taking the leap, and the various steps I encounter (sperm donation, choosing an egg donor, choosing the surrogate etc). So follow my experiences in THEGAYUK and on Twitter.

Next time, I want to take a look at the money. As the Thunderbugs once sang “It’s all about the money, dum, dum, de, de, dum.” At least, it is, to begin with.

Follow Simon’s journey on Twitter @simonxhill