Pure oblivious selfishness on display as if it were completely normal.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want my own family. Even in my early twenties, as a gay man before gay marriage was legal, I imagined that I’d probably marry a woman to have a family and then sleep with men on the side. It might not have been the best scenario, but that’s how much I wanted kids. I’d originally had it in my head that I’d like to be a dad by the time I was 40. But here I am at 44 – still trying.

He thought he’d marry a woman so that he could “have” some kids, and that he would fuck around on the side, no doubt without telling the pesky woman and without protecting her from potential STDs. That’s how much he wants what he wants and doesn’t care about anyone else.

I first looked into surrogacy as a single person in 2016. I didn’t realise it wasn’t legal then to do it on your own. It wasn’t until 2019 that the law changed to allow single people to become legal parents of children conceived through surrogacy in the UK. 

Selfishness encoded into law.

It was important for me to have my own biological child. 

It wasn’t important to him for the child to have two parents.

I said to him: “Look, I want to pursue surrogacy.” Unfortunately, we split up. It wasn’t because I wanted to try for a baby, but I knew he wasn’t that keen. I just thought: “I’m not prepared to wait any longer [for the right partner], or to have a relationship get in the way of my dream of becoming a parent.” So within a couple of weeks, I decided to do it alone.

He just thought he wasn’t prepared to try to create the best situation for the baby, so he decided to saddle the baby with a selfish oblivious single father who bought the baby as he might buy a car or a sailboat.

I bought a large pack of 10 eggs rather than a standard pack of six – although they gave me 13. Then last April I did ICSI, a fertility treatment in which they inject live sperm into the eggs. All 13 of the eggs survived the thawing process – nine were fertilised. I’ve now got five viable embryos out of the 13 eggs. It cost me about £15,000 for the whole package including ICSI and the eggs.

I’m still looking for a surrogate. It is illegal to pay a surrogate in the UK, except for their reasonable expenses. I can’t find one abroad because it’s too expensive – in Mexico City it’s about £70,000 and in America it’s more like £100,000. I don’t want to go to a cheaper place with poor aftercare and take any risks. It was the same when I got a hair transplant – I did it in the UK and not Turkey.

Oh how sweet, he’s as careful with his future human as he is with his hair transplant.

How long will it take to have a baby via surrogacy ? I mean… how long is a piece of string? People often say the average is 18 months to two years. Some people get pregnant within a year. Other times it could be four or five years. And once you’ve found a surrogate, there’s no guarantee that they’ll fall pregnant. I’ve heard stories of people having two or three failed transfers, then a couple of miscarriages and finally getting pregnant. So of course just finding the surrogate is one of the first steps.

Ah look what a good guy he is – he’s careful not to call his hired uterus a woman, because the uterus-haver might very well idennify as a man. Peak virtue achieved!

It’s so hard not having a partner to bounce off and be buoyant for you, and help you make hard decisions. Am I ready for it? I don’t know. But I know I want it.

And that’s all that matters.