Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (14 page)

Family is what you make it. As a gay man, I'm aware that sometimes your friends are more important than your bloodline, e.g. during ones coming out, but as we grow older, as we re-examine our relationship to our surroundings, many of us find out that our blood-relations are as important as our friends. I'm not trying to judge anyone who has lost hir relationship to their families. After all, Alex hasn't been in touch with his mom for over four years, for very good reasons. Yet, in light of having a baby, we have been discussing intensely of re-kindling that relationship, not for Alex's sake, but for the sake of our child, to grant hir the chance of meeting hir “farmor” (Swedish paternal grandmother). If that works out, great. If not, fine.

We are now in week 10 of our pregnancy with an expected date of birth of April 23 (according to the most recent ultrasound). We'll see if you end up an Aries or a Taurus. In any case, we'll spend parts of next summer in Mumbai.

This past weekend, two young women underwent womb transplant surgery at the university hospital “Sahlgrenska” in Gothenburg. This isn't the first time such surgery was done. Apparently, such transplants were also made in Turkey and Saudi Arabia earlier, without successful pregnancies as a result.

What makes the Swedish transplants different is the fact that the donors were the women's own mothers. They literally have the womb inside them from which they once were born themselves. The hope from the surgeons is, of course, that the risk of rejection is smaller if the donor organ is from a biological relative.

I was stunned when I learned that the ethical council that needs to approve all research on animals and humans in Sweden had approved these surgeries. To me, transplanting organs in order to conceive a child is the ultimate step (short of cloning) to become a parent.

Having mulled over these questions for decades (ever since my own biological clock started ticking), I have had ample time to think about procreation and the growth of a population.

This issue has two dimensions, the way I see it:

•Society: according to the current economic model, our population needs to grow to enable future growth, or as one of the scientists said on TV last night, “If we get a child out of it, it's worth the cost of the surgery”

•Parents: most of us want to be parents. The primal urge to spread our 'oats' is strong, both in women and men. Don't take it from me, just watch a documentary about animal or plant procreation… We are NO different.

However, there is one thing that makes humanity different from plants, animals and particularly other mammals. We have a CHOICE. We get to think about how we want to lead our lives. We aren't slaves under our primal urges. I'm not saying it's easy, but we can.

Being involuntary childless is tough, it's very tough. But there are many solutions to childless people (in order of 'ease'):

•IVF treatment helps a lot of people become pregnant and subsequently parents

•adoption

•foster family

•surrogacy

•apparently a womb transplant…

Personally, I think the last two options are completely unnecessary. I say that despite the fact that I'm currently in the process to become a father of a child through surrogacy. But I also believe that surrogacy is something that won't last forever, at least I don't hope so. Here's why:

Why spend millions to create ONE child if there already are children out there in the world without parents?

Having travelled the world, I know that for every child born through surrogacy, IVF and/or (eventually) womb transplants, there are hundreds, probably thousands of orphans and kids who suffer and are in need of a new home.

Yes, I think that people who want to be parents should get a shot at it.

But no, I don't think that we have the “right” for that child to be 'genetically' ours.

That is my philosophy, and from a societal point of view, adoption and foster care are much more sensible tools to solve the problem of involuntary childlessness than spending millions and millions of Euros on research on organ transplants. Sure, there may be fringe benefits from that research, but I still think it is utterly unnecessary.

One of the researchers mentioned that a transplant might grant women the chance of “enjoying the joys of pregnancy.” He also said that “since surrogacy isn't legal in Sweden, this seemed a sensible solution…” 

The real problem in our society is different:

•idiots who believe that families with adopted kids aren't 'real' families (my cousin and her parents got to hear that time and time again)

•idiots who feel that rainbow families are 'wrong'

•people who think that biology is stronger than the social bond between parents and children

•legislation in so many countries

Alex and I could've been parents to a beautiful 4-year-old boy through foster care had we not been stopped by homophobia. We could've easily adopted children from both India or Africa, if possible. 

We would NEVER have considered surrogacy, but since society & prejudice stopped us, we had no choice.

But a woman that feels that millions and millions of Euros must be spent so that she can enjoy morning sickness, back pains and kicking feet in her tummy, that just feels wrong, at least to me. 

I feel strongly for her and all the other women who want to be mothers, but there are other, better ways. Instead, we should work on changing perceptions in society...

Dear Pascale/Sascha!

You have just completed 25% of your time in the womb, having started week 11 of your expected 40 weeks pregnancy. If you count the gestational period of 38 weeks, you'll get there in two days. This is all very confusing for a first time parent, that difference of two weeks, but that is how 'normal' pregnancies are computed: 40 weeks from the last “period” or menstrual cycle or 38 weeks of actual gestation, as the fertilization of the egg is taking place approximately 2 weeks later.

Here's you about 10 days ago during 

your last ultrasound...

In your case, things obviously worked differently… You were conceived in a petri dish and reached the womb four days later, where you've been growing ever since, thanks to the help of your surrogate mother, who shares the next months with you.

For your dad and I, we can't wait for time to pass, and we are so thrilled that we reach another milestone in two weeks, the end of the first trimester. It is a well known fact that the first trimester is the most difficult one in terms of things that can go wrong, and we can't wait for the second trimester to begin.

In the meantime, we are trying to sort out practicalities and work with various government agencies to figure out how we can get all the paperwork in order.

Here's the complications we face, just to give you an idea of the hurdles we have to overcome.

Every child needs a guardian. Normally, in Sweden, the mother is automatically considered guardian. If she is married, so is the husband. Swedish law does not conceive the possibility of a child being born by a third party, i.e. a surrogate. Hence, according to Swedish law, the surrogate mother is automatically also guardian. Your dad and I are not guardians as neither of us is married to her. She is already happily married.

The first thing we need to do is to have her guardianship revoked and to have me (the biological father) take her place as sole guardian. To do that, we'll need her to sign a contract with the family court here in Sweden. I haven't really gotten around to that yet, but it's critical, because without being guardian, we won't be able to get medicines for you from a pharmacy in Sweden (just an example).

Secondly, Alex will have to adopt you to make sure you're also legally his child and to make him guardian as well. That is a complex process involving not only the family court but also social services and a bunch of amateur politicians who need to agree to this, formally anyway, which guarantees a prolonged process.

But more importantly, once you are born, we need to immediately start the process of getting you a Swedish passport (Swiss citizenship is a secondary thing we'll deal with once we are safely home here in Gothenburg again.) To get that, we'll need to send your birth certificate and a DNA test confirming that you are indeed my child to the Swedish consulate in Mumbai. They will forward that to the Swedish Embassy in Delhi, who will forward that to the Swedish Immigration bureau and Tax Authorities in Sweden to issue you a social security number (“personnummer”) and grant you citizenship. Once that is done, the papers are sent back to Delhi, forwarded to Mumbai, where the Consul will then issue you a temporary Swedish passport.

With that passport in hand (and probably a bunch of other paperwork), we'll then head to the Indian Immigration authorities to issue you a visa to depart the country. Only then will we be able to book a flight home…

But that isn't all. The one authority that I've been in touch with is the Swedish insurance authority. They are responsible for all the public assistance payments in Sweden, from the monthly child allowance to parental leave payments, etc. Being on sick leave, I was talking to them anyway and figured I might as well ask them about their process.

As fathers, we get a 10-day birth leave paid by the government, even though it is “assumed” that the mother will begin her parental leave. In our case, we hope that Alex will be able to take the first six months off, followed by me taking six months. However, as Alex is neither guardian nor father at your birth, to have him receive parental leave is going to be an interesting process requiring a bunch of papers from both the family courts and India… We are positive that we'll get this going smoothly.

After all, our agency,
SurrogacyIndia
, just delivered their 200th baby the other day, an astonishing accomplishment, and many of those babies are Swedish. Therefore, Swedish agencies are slowly becoming adjusted to this process and for every child, the process is going to become easier.

As I have a lot of followers reading these posts, I will make sure to lay out the process for you step by step as we work through it, and hopefully, with the contributions from others, give tips on what must be done in other countries, where processes naturally will be different.

In the meantime, there is not so much to report on your front. You keep growing and I noticed on a Swedish
app
from our local healthcare authority that your sexual organs are now differentiating.  You have arms and legs and can move (although not noticeably for the mother), your eyes are covered by thin eyelids, your lungs are developing just fine (filled with fetal water) and your intestines (which previously were in the umbilical cord) are slowly retreating into your belly where your other internal organs are developing. At a size of barely five centimeters and a weight of 8 grams, you are so tiny, yet already so alike a human being.

Please keep growing and developing, stay healthy, and be good to your surrogate! Your dads think of you every waking minute!

Love, Bappi

Dear Pascale / Sascha!

I haven't written to you for a while, but there has been very little to report. Well, that is not entirely true.