It’s not only us and the boys who love our country idyll. The dogs love the freedom and space that they have too. Here are our 4 pet dogs, starting in the foreground; Buddy, Sophie, Locke, and Jack. We also have 2 working dogs. The kids and dogs learn a lot from each other. If nothing else but to want to be out, whatever the weather.
So following on from the birth of our Son, Wil, who was the first baby ever to be born to a gay couple (us) by a UK surrogate (my wonderful sister), following a change in the law, we try to settle into family life (see previous blogs for full story). Instead a move is forthcoming and a challenge on our own prejudices…
We settled into parenthood with suprising ease, reiterating to me that we could not only do this, but could actually be good at it. Wil really was a contented baby, and still is a contented child. He ate, played and slept well, and stuck to a rough 3 hour routine. This didn’t seem to change whether he was at home or out and about. Oh, and to the frustration of a few Mums we know, he slept through the night from about 6 weeks. We can’t really take credit for this however, with Wil, we were just along for the ride! He was really making it easy though, and we loved being fathers. We still do, more than ever. Wil slotted straight into our life, like he was truly meant to be there.
Our family and friends were, and still are, truly amazing. Even though for them it must have been a shock when we announced our intention to be Daddy’s. Not one of them (obvious exception in media mole here), were anything but supportive, happy, and excited for us. The way that our friends and family weathered the media storm too still humbles me now. After all, the decision that we had made to be fathers had caused the newspaper intrusion, as out of our control of it as we were, the fact that it affected those we care about most was devestating to us. The reaction and support that we had from those closest to us definitely demonstrated their utter quality to us. Thank you.
The one thing that seemed to be putting a dampener on things however, was where we lived. I can’t deny that I have always wanted to move back to the country. I was raised in rural Cambridgeshire (big up the Fens) and I loved it. I loved the freedom I had. The sense of space and adventure everyday. Where we lived in Southampton however suited us at that time. The house was beautiful and big enough for another 6 children or so! The location was great too – there was space near by where we could run the dogs and we had the convenience of the City close by. It had been spoilt for us though.
From the day the reporters forced their way into the garden, into our life, we just couldn’t shake the feeling that our home had been violated. The reporters had infiltrated our sanctuary and poisoned it for us.
It wasn’t just the home however. I think that paranoia had started to set in and when we walked to the shops, or the local park, we couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched, stared at, judged. I’m sure that as much of this was our imagination as it was reality. It didn’t help though that local paper had printed the story, along with where we lived. OK, so they didn’t print the street name and house number, but were specific enough to be a cause for concern. The worst bit was, the comments that they received on our story were so nasty and twisted that they had to withdraw the comments page. The negative aura that this created at the time did nothing to help us feel comfortable in our home. It was the last thing we wanted, It didn’t change the fact that we were ecstatically happy at being parents, we just didn’t need that negativity.
We were far from ashamed or even afraid. In fact, quite the opposite. We are damn proud of being parents, not shy about who we are or where we’re from. This is our Son. We are his Dad’s. Love us or hate us, but you will never part us.
One moment sticks in my mind. Wil was a few weeks old and we had ventured to the local supermarket. As old people do, they would often approach us, so that they could coo over or newborn. This one lady in particular. Really sweet she was. Very complimentary about Wil and how adorable he was. And then she said “Who’s the Daddy?”. I must admit at this point I giggled like a school kid and almost asked her, wasn’t it obvious? But when she followed it up with “Are you giving Mummy a break?” I realised that she wasnt asking about the dynamics of our relationship, but questioning Wils parentage. Dragging my mind back from the gutter I told her that we were both his Daddy. I can still see her look at me and blink in confusion a few times saying “I’m sorry?” Assuming she wasn’t apologising for us, I told her that he had two Dads, and that he didn’t have a Mum (not in a practical sense anyhow. Wil will always know where he came from and be free to make his own choices as difficult as that may be for us). But anyway, the sweet old lady was now backing away with a look of shock on her face. With a final “Oh” she turned and hurried off. Now I don’t think for one minute she was judging us. In fact my over-riding sense was that she was embarrassed, flustered, and just didn’t know how to react. It took me straight back to the hundreds of times that I have had to tell someone I am gay, after they made the assumption that I was straight (yes, it does happen you know.) Someone once told me, probably quoting someone famous, that as a gay person you have to come out every day. Its true. We all make assumptions about people and live by ingrained stereotypes. Rightly or wrongly, it always happens. And I always feel awkward when it does.; “So what’s your wifes name?” When they see my wedding band. “I don’t have a wife. I have a husband.” “Oh, right.” I hate that look that comes over their face and the awkward silence that ensues. I’m never cross, not at all. We all do it. I’ve considered avoiding the truth, but dismissed that notion quickly. Without openess and honesty, the world is never going to change or know that there is another way. It was the same with the old lady. I felt bad for her. But we’re not ashamed, we’re not embarrassed and, though we’re far from intentional spokespersons, we realised that we were in a position where we are influencing people, challenging their ideas about family, parenthood, and love. We might not want to be there, but we had, have, a responsibilty to start to ease the way for others who are in a similar position, or contemplating starting a family such as ours.
The real purpose of this example though was to demonstrate why we wanted to get away from Southampton. Amazingly the gods aligned and we had the opportunity to move to a village close to where Ivan was raised, in the New Forest. It was perfect and we snatched the opportunity with both hands. When Wil was 3 months old we moved to our current home. A 3 bedroom, detached cottage in the middle of the woods, in a beautiful, small, New Forest village. It was the perfect place to raise Wil, and any subsequent children that came along. Our dogs would be able to run free. We could get chickens and grow vegetables. It was idlyic. We had an immediate sense of coming home when we stepped through the door. I had made it back to the country.
Despite our eagerness to grasp this opportunity, we couldn’t help but be a bit worried about going to such a small vilage. A community that was sure to be close-knit, judgemental, narrow-minded? After all, a multi-cultural area such as Southampton struggled. Maybe it would be worse? We decided the risk was worth it and we would keep ourselves to ourselves.
I’m cross at myself now. Cross and ashamed. There I’d been harping on about changing peoples views and pre-conceived notions and I was as bad as any of them. Judging people, putting them into boxes, not even giving them a chance. Mostly I’m a bit embarrassed. The village couldn’t have been anymore welcoming. Not one person battered an eyelid or questioned our family with anything other than genuine curiosity and acceptance. I tell you what. They’ve certainly taught me a lesson. We have been embraced into the heart of the community. We’re not special, or different, or a novelty. We’re normal. Normal people demonstrating that anyone can have a normal family. They had given us what we had always wanted.
I love it when that happens. When people don’t live up to my pre-conceived expectation and stereotype, but instead challenge it. Challenge my opinion, and start to chip away at the bigot that lurks deep inside of me. Deep inside most of us. We all have some small part to play in challenging what others think is normal. My village did it for me. I hope that we as a family are doing it for others.
So, sorry to my fellow villagers, sorry and thanks for teaching me a lesson in love and acceptance. Thank you for breaking my prejudice.
Lots of love, S xx
The kids, and us, adore our house and the fact that we live up a secluded track, with neighbours only just visible. It was a welcome move from the feeling of oppression that our home in Southampton had started to brew….
Blog to follow on the reasons behind the move and our dismay at our own prejudices. Love S X
Many more memories to share before I’m up to date. But thought I would include a quick pic of our Wil, the boy who made history, 5 years on. He’s amazing. Such a bright and balanced boy who truly fills our life, and those around him, with pure joy. Couldn’t ask for more. Love you Wil X
Now this is going to be a fairly short piece. It still hurts me to talk about it. I am over it. I don’t really want to re-visit it. And besides, it’s really not that relevant. I just felt that it was important not to gloss over things. After all, I can’t cherry pick the bits of my life that make me happy and not acknowledge the ones that just helped to make me stronger, more determined, and ultimately shaped my future in one way or another.
A few days after the initial article, which was positive and heart-warming, the Sun received a call from an ex-partner of mine. He decided to sell his ‘story’. Luckily I was given the heads up by people that knew him, and were disgusted by what he was about to do. I will always be grateful that they sought me out to let me know. Waking up to the lies and hatred that he had sold, without warning, would have been far worse than any anguish I felt before.
It was horrible though. I felt betrayed. Angry. Sad. Shocked. Guilty. I wondered whether he actually believed what he had said? Or whether he was just trying to be sensational, have his 5 minutes of fame and £100 in his pocket?
I was so enraged by the article that I came the closest I had to ‘selling’ my side. I didn’t give a shit about the money. I wanted to clear my name. I had documentary evidence to completely obliterate what he was saying. I came a dial tone away from giving Lorraine Kelly a call.
Then it hit me. It didn’t matter what I said. It didn’t matter what proof I had. People would believe what they wanted. The haters would hate and the lovers would love. I had almost made myself a pawn in the medias latest headline. Thank you friends, family and followers out there that gave me the strength to not let myself down.
Most of all, thank you William. Thank you for being the reason that letting myself down would have been so wrong.
In relation to the ex. I wish him all the best. I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing, or any desire to do so. But from my heart I hope that he is happy and content.
With regard to the article (and those that followed suite). I won’t publish a link, but they can still be googled if you feel so inclined.
Lots of love S xx
Part of our daily routine looking after our 4 horses. Luckily our horses are gentle giants and the boys love them. Think it’s really important for kids to be outside, getting dirt on themselves, as much as possible. Luckily for us they seem to agree 🙂 X
You know, I always thought I’d enjoy being in the limelight; a focus of the newspapers and the TV. Who hasn’t?? In my imagination though it was to celebrate my acting prowess or promoting my first album. Neither of these were anymore likely than being asked on a date by Gerard Butler. Mmm, Gerard. Definitely a close second to Ivan. What I could do with Gerard…
Oops, sorry. Where was I?
Oh yes, media. Well I can’t act, and I sure as hell can’t sing, so I’d given up on the whole media attention thing many moons ago. Imagine my surprise, horror in fact, to wake up a few days after Wils birth to discover we’d made the front page of The Sun.
We’d been warned by our legal advisor, Natalie Gamble, that the media loved a surrogacy story and that this one would be of particular interest to them. Natalie had advised us at the time that we either had to be very cautious, or embrace the media and approach them ourselves. We were unanimous that we had no interest in approaching the media. The decision for us to have a baby was a private one. To be shared with family and friends. The people that mattered.
If I’m honest, I don’t think we really believed that us having a baby would be of interest to anyone. Despite that however, we were very careful. We told close family and friends who we trusted only. We asked them to be mindful of what Natalie had said and to not share the news until we’d made it public. We told our work of course, we needed to make plans after all, but only on a need to know basis. We felt we’d done everything we could to keep things under wraps.
It was a couple of weeks before Wil was born that things changed a bit. At the time we lived in a detached bungalow in Southampton. The property was surrounded by 6′ fencing and was accessible by key coded gates only. Ivan walked out into the garden one day and was shocked to find a reporter stood in the back garden outside the door. The reporter said that he knew we were having a baby through a surrogate and that he wanted to tell our inspiring story. He said that he was there to give us that opportunity. Ivan saw red. This man had trespassed into our garden. Trespassed into our life. He was threatening what already meant the world to us. Ivan told the reporter to fuck off out of our garden, telling him we had no interest in selling ‘our story’.
You know. We still genuinely thought that there was nothing interesting in what we were doing. We were just having a baby for crying out loud. People do it every day, in every which way. Yes it was special to us and our families. But why the hell would anyone else be interested? Naively we thought that this would be the end of it. We worried for a bit, but when no article was forthcoming we thought that Ivan had scared him off.
A couple of weeks later to our utter delight Wil was born. Healthy. Happy. We were so ecstatic. The day Wil was born we slept for a few hours at Lorna’s. I say slept, but that’s not entirely accurate. Wil slept at the foot of our bed in a moses basket while we gazed on. We were so in love with him already. He was, is, perfect. When it was late enough in the morning to be able to sensibly leave we took Wil home. We knew we’d have to return the next day for a health check, but we just wanted to get home. Start family life as we meant to go on. It was so amazing walking into our home with Wil. Introducing him to the dogs. To the house. To us. We cherished being able to enjoy our amazing new son without distraction. Probably selfish of us really, but we felt it important as a family.
The next day we headed back to Sussex. The health check went well. After that we wandered up to the registry office with Lorna to register his birth. It was a blissful couple of days. We were shattered from it all, god knows how Lorna must have felt, but though we were exhausted we were definitely floating on a high. After showing off our beautiful son to our family, Ivan and I headed home to Southampton.
The next morning I woke early. I checked the computer and saw I had a new message on Facebook. I didn’t recognise the name, so interested clicked on the message. “I have just read your story in the Sun and wanted to say what a wonderful thing you have done. All the best to you and your family.” I can still feel my heart sink. My pulse raced and my hands shook as I processed what the message said. I could feel the tears threatening to spill over as I started a Google search…
Gay Policeman have baby using sister as surrogate. The headline screamed at me from the computer. There was a picture of us with Lorna, when we’d registered Wil’s birth the day before, clearly taken with a telephoto lens. WTF! I could feel everything shaking as I read the article. It was detailed. They knew things that only a close friend could. Down to the colour we’d originally painted the nursery. We’d been betrayed. That’s what hurt the most.
I went downstairs to Ivan. I couldn’t hold in the tears as I told him what I’d found. He held me as I shook, the shock too much. Once we’d both calmed down we re-read the article. Ironically it was beautifully written. Pretty much spot on in terms of accuracy. It was very pro us and talked about what a joyous occasion it was. It even went into describing Ivans army service in Northern Ireland and a Royal Humane Society award he’d been awarded for saving a man’s life a few years earlier. They had plenty of detail. We’d clearly been sold out. And that’s what we were finding most difficult to get over. We tortured ourselves trying to work out which of our trusted friends had betrayed us. And for what reason? Money, greed, jealousy? We couldn’t believe that any of them had done this to us, but there was no other explanation.
If we’d known the madness to come, I think we’d have made more of that day. Instead we ventured out only to buy a copy of the paper and then dwell on it. Sure, Wil counteracted this somewhat, but when he was sleeping I went back to worrying. I took to trawling the comments on the Suns website. I was heartened to see many congratulations included in the comments. Strangers wishing us the best. Then there was the dark side. The hundreds of people saying we were evil and selfish to bring a child into the world in the way we had. We were monsters that were cruelly bringing a child into our life when we knew he would be bullied and ridiculed throughout his life. One comment in particular stays with me; “How dare these selfish people be so selfish as to bring a child into the world knowing that he will be teased. I pity that they are so desperate. If they want something to look after they should get a pink poodle.” I was so angry. How dare they. I fucking hate poodles and can’t bear pink. But seriously, it was one of many comments that really made me see what bigoted, narrow minded idiots there are in the world. I had to shut the computer down and go and hug our son. A son we bought into this world out of love and with serious consideration. Knowing that we could provide a home full of love, warmth and happiness and provide him with the tools to deal with the narrow minded bigots, that he would inevitably encounter, with strength and dignity and a quick jab to the throat if needs be.
After a sleepless night I again woke early the next day. This time it was the buzzer going off. I went to the gate and was gobsmacked to find reporters and photographers crowding the house. I just slammed the gate and went back indoors. They continued to shout over the fence and take photographs into the garden and the windows. It was madness. What the hell was going on. We’d just had a bloody baby for godsake. Leave us alone to enjoy it. That day we had to visit the children’s center for them to weigh and check Wil over. We’d been really excited about this, but now we were just worried. We rang ahead to let them know in case they wanted us to avoid coming down. They were brilliant and said they’d lock the doors and for us to come on down. We got Wil ready and secured him in his car seat. As the electric gates opened to let us out of our garden the press crowded in. Their cameras bashed against the window and the flashes exploded in our faces. I tried to cover Wil’s face as Ivan edged out through the crowd. As we turned into the road and started to pull away we realised they were jumping into cars and following. We were being paparazzi’d for crying out loud! It took all of Ivans driving skills, but he managed to lose them before we reached the children’s center. The appointment was amazing and the staff fantastic.
Unfortunately when we returned home the reporters were still there waiting. Calling. Hounding. In the end we had to call our colleagues in the Police to try and get them moved. It seemed to work for a while. The story had been taken up by all the local and national papers. In fact, in the weeks to follow we found out it had gone worldwide.
Our messages and email went crazy. We had offers from newspapers, magazines, television, radio. Lorraine Kelly wanted us on her show. C4 wanted to make a documentary on us. Lily Allen got in touch. Ok, that was cool. For 24 hours she was my friend on Facebook… And she added me I’ll have you know. I think my crazy messaging might have scared her off though as she disappeared from my friends list.
Truth is. We were offered thousands of pounds to sell our story. Trouble is. It wasn’t a story. It was our life. Our family. Our son. We turned it all down. We just weren’t interested. Sure, there was a certain temptation…great savings fund for Wil. But it felt wrong. If nothing else it would fuel the interest in the story and things were far too stressful to do that.
When we wouldn’t talk, and the press were getting no joy from Lorna either, they started to hunt down our friends and family. Luckily no one else spoke to them. The fools even turned up at Ivans parents. The image of his dad chasing them down his driveway still sticks with me as though I was actually there! Priceless!
We had to start screening out the hundreds of horrible, nasty, threatening messages that were there. Instead we took strength from the many more messages that told us of the hope that we had given people. The hope that they too could have a family. People who said that until they’d read our story they had no reason to live. They didn’t want to be gay they wanted a family, but now they saw that both could go hand in hand. We heard from people all over the world. Messages that gave us strength and made us realise that good easily kicks bads butt. We never did find out which ‘friend’ sold our son out. I don’t care now. Thankfully, in the days, weeks and months that followed the press grew less interested. The story died but the change that had occurred and the hope that it had given people could never be changed.
The thing that makes us proudest of all is the realisation that, in one small moment, at 05:09hrs on 11/07/2009 our son William had made history. He was a first and that couldn’t happen again. He had changed the world for good without even knowing it.
Media madness: one of many articles released
More of a shock to us than anyone else. Blog to follow about the impact of this unwanted media attention.
Two of my favourite boys sharing a cuddle full of love. Nothing like it. Warms my heart 🙂 X
We’re very male heavy in our household. Balance added this weekend with a brilliant visit from a great friend and her beautiful girls. Luckily they play beautifully together and the girls give as good as they get!
It was great to hear them all giggling when they were supposed to be sleeping!
Can’t deny, think a couple more kids would fit in here permanently…. Even if they were girls 😉 X
rainbowdad 