How did we come to be (part three)

We chose to have our first surrogacy in India. We had to wait over a year for the ivf clinic to find two separate women who could prove that they were single. India is a world away from the one we know. There was no women’s liberation in the 1960’s. Very sadly women are second to men on the social scale, whatever cast they’re fortunate or unfortunate to be born into. There are very few single women in a country of over a billion people. Younger women are just in waiting for their marriage, the vast majority of women are married and a very, very small number of women, who might be widowed or divorced can prove it with the relevant paperwork that the U.K. government will accept. For the genetic father to have any rights as the father of a baby born through surrogacy, the surrogate needs to be unmarried. If she is married, her husband is regarded as the babies father in U.K. law. Anyhow, with our Sperm already on ice, embryos were produced and two separate pregnancies were attempted. One surrogate had the embryos created from Johns sperm and the other surrogate, embryos that were biologically mine. All of the embryos shared the same egg donors genetics. One pregnancy was a success and sadly the other pregnancy was not. An ironic twist added to the story was that the successful pregnancy was going to be a twin pregnancy. Of course, one of us was saddened that there was a significant failure, but as potential, committed parents, the genetics were not everything. We were both going to become Dads. And we learnt at this early stage, things seldom go as planned! Remember it was john and I who planned the family and to be the children’s sole parents. The egg donor wasn’t planning on being a mother to our children and as for the surrogate? She wasn’t doing this for us to be nice, remember we chose compensated surrogacy in India (not legal here in the U.K.) and she was very well paid to carry our babies to term. There was no genetic connection. Our children only have two parents and we both happen to be men! Thirty five weeks later, we were suddenly a family of two dads, two dogs and now, two little baby girls. The family was growing.

Okay it’s time for bed now so there will have to be a ‘part four’ of this chapter tomorrow. Upstairs the girls have all been shouting and running around, now two hours since going up to bed, they have finally just settled. I went up an hour ago and changed Aaliyah’s stinky nappy and finally things are quiet. Then the boys were fast asleep. As will I be very soon, Goodnight.