Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (18 page)

I haven't written anything here for a while, I'm sorry. I've just come back from two weeks of travel that kept me busy and while I sat at my laptop every day for hours, there was no time to really work on my blog.

Thank you José & Kirk for the first ever baby clothes that Alex and I received for our little one. We are very happy!

There has been little news from India recently apart from a report that shows that all is well with the baby, and that our low lying placenta has righted itself (for which we are really grateful!) The events now circulate around tooth aches for the surrogate and we really look forward to our first Skype call with her on Saturday, when we're in week 22. The baby weighs approx. 340 grams and is 2,8 cm long feet (that was two weeks ago).

Given that the baby's foot size is proportionate to the rest of the body, the baby would've been about 20 cm tall, approximately the size of my iPad mini… But, again, that was two weeks ago. I can't fathom how anyone could abort at this stage, unless the mother's life is in serious danger. But that's a different story.

Even though things are still moving along quickly, I now can't wait to meet and hold our child in my arms. We're more than halfway through, but still… There're so many more weeks to come, so much more growth that needs to happen, so many more tests to pass, so much to prepare (which will keep us quite busy after the new year). We must talk to the family courts, insurance company, immigration bureau, consulates, book flights, etc. The thought itself is quite mind-boggling...

When I got to Vegas a week ago, I was shocked when friends presented me with baby clothes and now we have several sets of clothes and toys for the baby. First, I was just speechless, because we're still so early in the pregnancy, but I understand that my American friends & family members won't be able to attend the baby shower and may have to wait to actually meet the baby.

Both Alex and I are deeply touched by this show of love, and I'm sure we'll put both toys and clothes to excellent use!

And to forever preserve these very first baby gifts, here they are:

Thank you Rebecca & Ali with family for your contribution! :)

Will the baby be a racer..?

And thank you sis & family (Bob, Sean & Bryan)

for your thoughtful gifts! :)

Thank you all who contributed, thought of us and made these thoughtful gifts. As you can see, most chose very neutral colors as we do not know (and will not know) the sex of the baby. I was pleased to see that our friends respect our distaste for “pink” & “blue” to shoehorn an innocent baby into age old gender roles. We'll dress a boy in pink and a girl in blue if it's pretty and if it fits, but never a boy in blue or a girl in pink unless s/he specifically asks for it later in life. Gender roles and expectations will be a heavy enough burden to carry anyway, so we won't have any part of that! :) Worth keeping in mind when you want to play ball with us…

As a father to be, in what I would consider a stable relationship (we've been hanging together for 11 years, 8 of them as a married couple), I read a lot about what is being said about families.

I do so because there are a lot of people out there who feel that my husband and I will
never
be a “family.” Heck, some even claim we aren't
people
, an argument we haven't heard since slavery, Indian genocides or the civil rights movement!

We don't really know what the majority of people are thinking, but as with all issues, there is a very loud minority that will go to any extreme to deny us our humanity. Going so far as to even want to kill us (e.g Westboro Baptist Church or the Ugandan government.) On the other hand, you have the gay community which, of course, (largely, there are exceptions even among us, as the article in the
Guardian
demonstrates) works for equal rights for all humans.

Normally, people argue with the bible or the Quran or the Torah to make a point that a “family” is mother, father & children. Anything else is not. I'm not an expert on religious texts so I don't really know if there is an area in the bible that says you have to be married to be considered part of a family. Jesus never got married, the prophet Mohammed married a woman so old she could've been his mother, not your standard textbook marriage either. And the Torah? Well, isn't there the story of a father willing to sacrifice his own son? Hmm, not sure that's the kind of family I aspire to (although in all fairness, they do exist out there).

I've yet to see anyone make the point (without any referrals to any deity) of just why a family can only be a family with a mom, a dad and kids.

Because, when you look at human history, mom, dad & kids, is really the exception rather than the rule in the development of our species. Go a few thousand years back (and I presume that during the times prior to that, it was similar), family was the “hearth,” the fire and the people gathered around it. Families were large groups of several males and females and it was most likely the strongest of the males that propagated the species, with the weaker ones sneaking their 'beaks' into a willing woman when no one else was watching. People didn't care about who was father, and motherhood wasn't as strong as we may consider it today, but all women shared in the responsibility of nurturing the young, much as you would still see in many primate or large mammal societies.

Later, family evolved into generational constructs where several generations would live under one roof. Depending on culture, this would follow a maternal or paternal pattern. For many cultures in what we call emerging countries, this is still the norm today. (Africa, India, China, etc.) It was also the norm in the western world until only a few decades ago. We seem to have forgotten that it was only after the 1940s that our world began to rapidly change and that the era of the so-called “core family” is but sixty years old. And it's all but over… Today, more and more straight couples never even marry, the average Swedish marriage lasts 8,7 years, while in the US it is even shorter (7,9 years for the first, 7,3 for the second marriages, the mere fact that they discern between the two is interesting enough).

But even in those “traditional” (let me use the term although we've already established they aren't) families, things don't always go as planned. People die, they break up (apparently) which leaves many mothers and fathers alike to fend for themselves. According to the Swedish Statistical bureau, about 1 out of 5 households with children are single!

Some kids are raised by their grandparents or other loved ones because parents, for whatever reason aren't available.

But I grant you, roughly 4 out of 5 kids grow up in households where there is a man and a woman (albeit NOT necessarily their mother and father, given the divorce rates stated above). I remember growing up in the glory days of 'traditional families' back in the sixties and seventies. My hard working father was never at home. My brother and I were basically raised by our mother. When I look back at my childhood memories, there is no dad in my brain, just my mom, with one notable exception. That was the plight of the traditional family. Is that what the majority of us really want? A father on paper, but absent from real life, consumed by his role as breadwinner? It's not what I want…

But that is still how things look today in straight families. Even in a country like Sweden, most parental leave days are taken by mothers (even way beyond the days of breastfeeding), moms are home with sick kids much more frequently (4 out of 5 days) than dads, women still take care of the household chores much more than men do, etc.

Is this really what we want? Is this what we want our kids to learn? Emulate? Propagate?

What do children need that only a “father” or a “mother” can provide them with? What the proponents of the “traditional” (although only 60 years old, remind you) family claim is (I have no other explanation) that men and women are inherently DIFFERENT.

Basically, a man can never really understand a woman's point of view and vice versa!

Basically, only genetic offspring can be taught by mother and father!

If you start to make exceptions, e.g. for adoption or foster care, you already question the validity of the need for a father (because all of a sudden any man can do, which includes several men, which again is an abomination for most of those people) or a mother (because if any woman can do, so could four, and as far as I know, only Muslims could live with that, and their traditional families are far from mom and dad…)

Adoptions, foster care, single parents are all abominations in the eye of these groups that try to propagate a system that is only 60 years old (and irrevocably dying…) The world, humanity, has always changed. The way we care for our children has always changed with it. Today, few women would agree to give up their careers to foster their children the way my mother did 45 years ago. Today, few Swedish families would agree to hit their children, beat them physically, the way we did regularly until it was outlawed 35 years ago. Today, few fathers would agree not to be able to be with their children for at least a month or two after they are born, although that right is less than 20 years old.

Because, in the end, given that there really are no arguments beyond the religious (and those are invalid as there is no scientific proof to back them up), bringing up children isn't a question of merely the sex of the parent(s). It's primarily about love, and all research into rainbow families proves that those kids stand (on average) a better chance than majority children in life.

Modern child! (Alex & mine)

Not because rainbow families are 'better' but because such children have been planned for, and thus most likely taken better care of than the results of a Friday night binge drinking. Most parents love their kids more than their own life, but that has absolutely nothing to do with their sex. To claim so is to deny humanity its very essence, to be more than our sex. We are more than “eat, shit, fuck.” We can actively choose not to have children if we feel we aren't up to the task. We can survive the break-up of our family ties and build new ones. We can even choose not to eat or not to have sex (usually driven by religion, right Mr. Ratzinger?)