Tag: Parenting

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.