The first few months at home with the boys were challenging, to say the least. Josh and I foolishly tried to juggle premature twins on our own while maintaining full-time jobs (albeit with alternating schedules) and nearly drove ourselves insane during the process. Coaxing a bottle into one of the twins could take as long as an hour, so there was very little downtime and it felt nearly continuous alternating between one twin who was feeding and the other who was screaming with hunger. We were constantly tripping over the apnea monitors, which felt like balls and chains. After three months, the boys learned how to kick the wires loose and we had a few early morning false alarms erupt through the house before we retired the monitors to the closet.
By November, we were ready to wave the white flag when Josh’s mother told us about a conversation that she had struck up with a nanny caring for twins and an older brother at the local mall. It turned out that the nanny, Pat, was looking for a new job, because the children she was caring for were moving out of state. Pat started working with us eight hours a day and was a dream, caring for the boys all the way up until they started preschool at age three.
When JJ and AJ were four years old in 2012, I distinctly recall a moment on one of our frequent family trips to nearby theme parks in Florida. I sat down to rest and watched the boys run off to play in the distance. They were becoming more and more independent. I felt weariness in my bones, my subconscious calculations became conscious and I realized we were running out of time.
A few weeks later, on a weekend getaway to New York to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary, I explained to Josh over a romantic dinner that ever since the boys were born, I had been constantly adding eighteen to our ages. If we had another child right then, how old was I going to be before they were all grown up? I confessed to Josh my yearning for another child on that trip. Josh was not as sure this time around, but decided to go along for the ride. We began to plan for our next journey together.
Times had changed and the economy of 2012 was not nearly as conducive to baby making. We made furtive communication with the agency in California, only to find that financing an identical process five years later was now going to be much more difficult. We had paid off the line of credit and I had a job that paid more, but Josh’s business was not doing nearly as well as it was during the boom years and banks were no longer giving the type of credit that had been our ace in the hole back in 2006.
However, Josh’s research saved the day yet again when he came across the concept of international surrogacy. Following the lead of agencies like the one in California, operations were springing up in Latin America and Asia that offered gestational surrogacy at much lower costs compared to the United States. We began investigating our international options. After briefly considering Latin America, we ultimately honed in on India, because it offered modern medicine on par with US standards—but at lower costs—as well as a relatively cosmopolitan setting to locate an egg donor of Caucasian or Asian descent.
In selecting the specific Indian clinic, our prior experience as parents through surrogacy served us well in weeding out some questionable situations. In some cases, we knew immediately that we were being lied to. “No need to make the trip to India beforehand,” one clinic said. “We can just ship your stuff to India, because frozen is as good as fresh for IVF.” That was a lie. “To ensure success in one cycle, we can transfer to two different surrogates. I know you just said you would prefer a singleton. The two surrogates have never gotten pregnant at the same time like that, and certainly not with multiples.” Another lie. We eliminated those agencies making false promises and quickly whittled down our options to an American facilitator who had gone through the surrogacy process in India himself and was referring people directly to a clinic in Mumbai.
Some claims were not as easily disproven. We had to see the operation for ourselves to make sure everything was legit. In October 2012, my sister, Annie, and brother-in-law, Rahul, came to Florida to stay for ten days, so they could take JJ and AJ to school and go trick-or-treating with them on Halloween while Josh and I made our first trip to India. We were very quiet about our plans, because we felt there was a lot of uncertainty pursuing international surrogacy. Not many people knew we were even going to be away. We didn’t want it to be public knowledge if we were about to be swindled.
Once we met with the clinic director, we felt comfortable enough to proceed. We got the sense that the clinic director genuinely cared for the welfare of her surrogates. She introduced us to the person we were going to potentially match with. Because of language and cultural barriers, we knew that this relationship could never be like the one we had with Marie. However, when a translator informed our new surrogate that we had selected her, the beaming smile on her face told us that she was very happy for this opportunity.
Because of different economies in the US versus India, the fee that we had paid Marie was certainly nice, but nothing she couldn’t make working for several months at any number of jobs. Even though the money we gave to our surrogate in India was a fraction of that amount, in the Indian economy this money was life-changing for her family and could actually buy her a home or put both of her own children through school. We dove into the IVF process again, using an egg donor we had selected via e-mail correspondence prior to the trip. Before our return to the US, we politely asked to limit the number of embryos transferred on this first try to just two, because we wanted to aim for a singleton. Apparently, fate decided we could handle more than that. A few weeks later, we received an e-mail announcing that we were pregnant with twins…again.
Because of logistical issues, our dozen trips to California to visit with Marie were reduced to two visits to India: one for baby making and one for baby pickup. In the months between, we had to satisfy ourselves with relatively infrequent and curt e-mails announcing the basic status of things with ultrasound pictures every month or so. This sparse communication proved unnerving at times and nagging doubts sometimes emerged. What if we were being swindled after all? We had recurring nightmares of returning to India only to find the infertility clinic had been suddenly replaced with a nail salon and none of the nail techs knew anything about babies.
We asked for some guidance about the projected delivery date and decided to go to Mumbai a bit early to avoid any surprises that might cause us to miss the birth like we did the first time. We ended up spending the second half of June waiting in Mumbai, camped out in a hotel and planning different permutations of baby names. Determining the baby’s gender prior to birth was illegal in India, so we didn’t know if we were ending up with boys, girls or one of each.
Baby girl DJ and baby boy MJ ended up being born, by coincidence, on the day before their older brothers’ birthday, but much closer to full-term at thirty-seven weeks. They did not have the prematurity issues that JJ and AJ had, so they were discharged uneventfully after three days in a regular hospital room and we took them back to our hotel.
The phase of international surrogacy that we had always anticipated to be the most difficult was getting the necessary paperwork to bring our children home to the US. After spending only a few days in India with Josh and the babies to get the process rolling—and with work responsibilities and the older twins waiting at home—I headed back to the US while Josh and the little ones waited for the proper travel documents to be issued. We had estimates that it could take anywhere from two weeks to two months.
We each effectively became single parents of twins on opposite sides of the globe. I jumped right back into full-time work, dropping off JJ and AJ each day at summer camp. Given his experience and night-owl tendencies, Josh didn’t have too much trouble handling the infants overnight on his own at the hotel. During the daytime, we hired a nurse from an agency recommended by the hospital to help care for the twins so Josh could rest and get some work done. Again, due to the economic differences, a nurse to care for the twins eleven hours a day only ended up costing the equivalent of fifty US dollars. It was well worth it and the nurse was a
wonderful help.
The first step right after the birth was making an appointment at the US Consulate in Mumbai to apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA). To submit this application, we had to provide multiple documents and DNA samples to show that DJ and MJ are the biological children of a US citizen who has lived in the US for at least five years. This proved that DJ and MJ are natural-born US citizens who acquired their citizenship at birth, no matter what the anti-DJ-or-MJ-for-president birthers of 2056 will have to say.
The supporting evidence was all conscientiously gathered for the big day, only for us to find out that the US Consulate’s credit card machine was temporarily down and that we needed to pay in cash. After a mad scramble in a taxi searching for a bank that could advance cash on a US-based card, the taxi driver ended up saving the day by driving to his own home nearby and fronting us the cash to be paid back after returning to the hotel on the other side of Mumbai, over an hour away. Phew!
After more than a week of anxiously waiting for the application materials to be sent to the US for processing, DJ and MJ were officially declared US citizens and passports were issued.
Great! So we can leave now, right?
“Not so fast,” said the Indian government. India is a country that requires a visa to enter and exit. Once they became US citizens, the infants also became scofflaws: They were Americans in India without a visa. DJ and MJ needed to be granted exit visas from the Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) on their shiny new passports. The FRRO office in Mumbai is run by the Mumbai Police Department with the approval of an overseeing ministry in the capital of New Delhi.
Josh and I obtained tourist visas at the beginning of the international surrogacy process as directed by the agency we worked with. After we got to India and did the IVF procedure in November 2012, it was announced the next month that the visa guidelines for surrogacy had changed. Intended parents coming to India for the purposes of surrogacy were now required to travel on special medical visas, which were only issued to couples consisting of a man and woman married for at least two years. It was a not-so-subtle jab at gay intended parents seeking to have children through surrogacy.
Josh and I took solace in the fact that we had been “grandfathered in” before the new guidelines were publicized and enforced. However, we were also very sad and angry for the many gay intended parents who could have come after us, but now had that avenue closed to them for discriminatory reasons. We have since come to learn that many gay intended parents who had been looking to India are now directing their international surrogacy pursuits toward clinics in Thailand instead.
Even though we were “grandfathered in” before the new visa guidelines took effect, the process for getting exit visas from the FRRO had become more complicated. It used to be that these exit visas could be issued on the same day if you waited in line for a few hours. Now, we had to submit notarized documents proving we had started the surrogacy process before December 2012 and these documents needed to be reviewed by the main FRRO office in New Delhi before approval could be issued, possibly weeks later. Luckily, we made sure our paperwork did not raise any red flags and our agency had contacts who helped speed up the process.
Ultimately, about a month after the babies were born, the exit visas were issued and Josh returned triumphantly to the US, flying around the world alone with the little twins for a joyous family reunion. Pat was ready to start again immediately with the new twins and thus became possibly the world’s most experienced twin nanny. JJ and AJ went back to school and had the most interesting summer vacation stories to tell their first-grade classmates.
Josh and I have since settled into a comfortable (if, at times, chaotic) routine, now juggling two sets of twins. We have found DJ and MJ to be much easier to handle, which we attribute to a combination of the babies being closer to full-term and Josh and I being more seasoned than your average parents of newborn twins. Whenever we go out as a family of six, we create a bit of a spectacle and attract curious glances from strangers trying to figure out exactly what is going on, but we are fortunate to have never had an unkind word spoken to us in public about being gay parents.
Whenever we get Josh’s parents to babysit for a couple of hours so we can have a date night dinner out, Josh always starts the conversation by asking what our next big adventure will be. We are definitely done having children, but who knows where our next journey may lead?
Kevin Wakelin
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to have lots of children one day—or so my parents have often said. But truth be told, I actually do have vague memories of making such a declaration to my family on numerous occasions. I imagined a whole soccer team of kids with me as the doting dad. Fortunately, my folks never stood in the way of my unsubstantiated declarations, despite occasional dismissive eyeball rolls. My life has been one constant adventure of stepping out of the box, marching to my own beat and following my heart—maturing only by making every mistake there is to make. I’ve always loved kids, loved being a kid and still am a kid at heart.
By the time the real subject of whether or not to have children rolled around—back in 2000—there were many new opportunities for my then-partner and I to explore, including adoption and surrogacy. A number of trailblazers had already forged a path before us, but we definitely felt like a part of the new, emerging trend of visible alternative families.
Fortunately, we had done our fair share of footloose and fancy-free partying in our twenties. To be young, free, single and gay in San Francisco in the 1990s was hardly torturous. Throw in perfect synchronicity with the booming dot-com bubble around us and the fun times got even more interesting. With those days behind us, we happily sold our home in the heart of the Castro District and moved out to the East Bay suburbs into a spacious, single-family house with a yard, trees and room to grow—the perfect place to raise a family. There was no white picket fence but, within a year, I built one.
We had originally looked at adoption and went to many open house events for various agencies. Unfortunately, we were often the only gay couple in attendance. Many of the stories people shared revolved around infertility, which didn’t apply to us, and the language used by the facilitators was not inclusive to same-sex couples. We asked about statistics on gay couples, but the answers we got back were always ambiguous. I know things have gotten better now, but back in the early 2000s, reaching out to same-sex couples was still a new thing for adoption agencies. So at the time, adoption just didn’t seem like a good fit for us.
We changed course and began looking into gestational surrogacy, an expensive process involving an egg donor, a surrogate, our sperm, numerous doctors and many more attorneys. We ultimately found it to be the right choice for us, because it seemed like we could have more control over the process. We could be in charge of the timing, the people we interacted with and a lot of the genetics. The one thing that was left to Mother Nature was the sex of the child. Everything else was rather engineered. We decided to move forward with surrogacy, knowing that we had a better stake in the game.
Picking an egg donor was probably the hardest part. We were unprepared for the emotional and spiritual toll it took. We went through numerous binders to help make a selection. Did we want someone who was tall? Someone who was athletic? Someone who was smart? The process became uncomfortable for us and it started to feel like we were in a science-fiction movie. It was surreal trying to map out the genetic code of your biological child and we struggled with it.
Weeks went by and the selection process wasn’t getting any easier, so we decided to start looking at donors in a different way. Instead of trying to choose someone based on medical history, SAT scores or genetic traits, we reviewed each profile and photo to determine who we could most likely be friends with based on hobbies, interests and cultural identities. The new method worked and in no time we had our donor!
Choosing a surrogate was a much smoother process. The agency pre-scre
ens all applicants and the majority of them don’t make it through that initial phase. Afterward, there is a matching service to help couples find a surrogate who fits in with their lifestyle choices. For example, some surrogates want to be left alone throughout the majority of their pregnancy, so they shouldn’t be matched with a couple who wants a lot of contact. Some surrogates want communication after birth and others do not. We were lucky enough to match with a wonderful woman who lived close by.
The next step was for us to provide the sperm. We decided to mix ours together and have them battle it out to the finish line. This plan worked well for us, because throughout the whole process, from information gathering to the birth itself, we were completely engaged together without ever knowing which one of us actually fertilized the egg. It made for a sense of equality between us as a couple and was a powerful originator of equal bonding.
Because she lived so close to us, we had a lot of contact with our surrogate both before and after she became pregnant. It was wonderful for us, because we got to be involved with every medical appointment, from seeing the initial sonogram to hearing our child’s first heartbeat. At the same time it was also a bit surreal, because here we were, thrust into an intimate relationship with a complete stranger.
We tried to do a lot of activities with our surrogate to normalize things. We went shopping, took hikes and had meals together. Sometimes she even stayed with us overnight. We wanted to establish a relationship with her now to ensure she stayed a part of our lives even after the baby was born. If our son or daughter ever had questions about where he or she came from, he or she could get real answers from people he or she knew.
With all the activities and doctor appointments going on, time flew by. At 3:00 A.M. some nine months later, we received a call that our surrogate’s water had broken. We jumped into the car and drove to the hospital in Sacramento. We expected to get there quickly, since there was no traffic at that time in the morning, but weather in the Bay Area never cooperates. That night we drove twenty-five miles per hour on the highway in fog as thick as pea soup!
Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood Page 13