Maybe, just maybe, it’s not actually such a nice thing for a man to get a woman to gestate a baby for him, and then walk off into the sunset with that motherless baby. Maybe it’s not actually all that cool to produce a motherless baby on purpose.
My son, Elijah Northwood, was born just before midnight earlier this year, on Sunday March 8, 2026, International Women’s Day. There is something touching about this. I am his dad, but Elijah is the product of not one but two international women: his Venezuelan egg donor and his Mexican birth mother.
That double helping of good women will have to do him for now, though, because I am a single dad and, what’s more, a gay single dad, hitting the ground running, alone with my son in an Airbnb in Mexico City for as long as it takes to get him both a Mexican and a British passport. Suddenly, I have to be both mother and father to him with no real preparation except anticipation, helpless except for the daily breast milk deliveries from his birth mother, the Google translation app that enables her to contact me with tips and advice, and Uber Eats, which keeps me from starving.
If it were an accident it would be very poignant. But it’s not an accident, he did this on purpose.
In 2021 I bought a house in Mile End, east London, that would be suitable for children even if, as I began to realise during the lonely days of lockdown, I might have to do it on my own. I faced up to the situation and told myself, “I know you want someone on this journey with you but, you know what, let’s just do this.”
Let’s create a baby who will never have a mother. On purpose. Because dude wants one.
As soon as I made that decision, I felt euphoric. I was taking control of my future — and my family’s.
Yes, you were taking control of your kid’s future in quite a drastic way.
The basic cost from the agency is about £65,000 but, typical me, I kept going for the expensive options. The egg donors priced themselves according to how they pegged their “worth” when it comes to looks and genes. I could have chosen a donor at £4,000, but I went for the beautiful donor who priced herself at £15,000.
Great god almighty. I hadn’t read that bit when I started writing this. What a horrible man.
For the first eight weeks the surrogate expressed breast milk for Elijah and got her boyfriend to deliver it to us. I will never lose touch with her and I will be transparent and open with my son from the start, telling him the whole story and showing him pictures of her and her family.
Oh, how sweet. There’s no chance at all that that will backfire. No way will the kid end up resenting and grieving the substitution of photos for having an actual mother present in his life.
My lowest point was on Mother’s Day, just another day for me and Elijah in the park, but looking around me at all the mums and dads, taking it in turns to hold their kid, I was supersensitive to the fact that Elijah has no mother, that I didn’t have anyone to do that tag-teaming with. It was 3pm and everyone I love was still asleep back in the UK, so I couldn’t even call anyone. I felt very alone.
Oh, honey. That’s so sad. Now think about how the kid is going to feel. Forever.
In my world especially, there is every combination of parenting and none of it is perfect. You just do the best you can to make your child feel healthy, loved and special. And at least I get to be my own boss, with no one telling me what to do. Being on my own with Elijah in Mexico City soon turned me into that dad who isn’t afraid to be totally stupid with him, who sings to him, dances with him, plays peekaboo for longer than I could have believed possible.
There are online trolls criticising me for choosing to be a single gay dad through surrogacy — there’s a thread on Mumsnet that asks, “In which country will he be purchasing an infant?” and others that say being gay is no reason to “buy babies” — but I have never had the slightest sense of that in the village I have built around me.
I see, the people who think men shouldn’t buy themselves motherless children are trolls while he is…what, a saint? A kind generous benefactor who deliberately commissions and pays for a child who will never have a mother? No, potential occasional visits to the nice mujer in Mexico do not count as having a mother.
I had always planned to have two children, but with the shock of being a new dad, that idea went out the window. Now I’m starting to think again about a sibling for Elijah. As I said to myself the other day, as we lolled together in our courtyard in the sunshine, “I’m good at this. I’m a bit of a natural.”
I don’t care what anyone thinks. I was born to do this.”
He doesn’t care what anyone thinks, including his baby in 10 or 15 years.