Kid issue

Last week, I was sat in the waiting room at the doctor's surgery, and sat opposite me was a woman holding her baby. The baby was only a few months old but at the point where she was very vocal, and very aware of her surroundings. As babies do, she kept staring at me. I'm never quite sure whether to look back, but as soon as I did, she started smiling at me, and every time I looked back, she smiled at me and giggled.

A few days later, I was round at my auntie's for a few drinks, and her new "man" (not sure you can call a 50 year old a "boyfriend") was there with his daughter, and her 16 month old son. When he eventually woke up from his nap, he was bounding around everywhere. Still unsteady on his feet, it was probably the cutest thing ever. His speech is quite advanced for his age, and he points at things and says what it is, but his favourite word is "duck" and when he was playing around his paddling pool, he kept pointing at his rubber ducks and shouting DUCK at the top of his voice. Having played a few games of hide and seek with my mum he turned his attention to me and decided he wanted to show me his ducks! So cute!

These two experiences in particular (and a couple of others out and about) have left me feeling oddly broody, and the subject of children has been on my mind quite a lot. But as a gay man, many would assume that children just isn't an option. The aforementioned auntie had said at one point to my mum "the only disappointment lies in that there won't be any grandchildren". Her assumption reflects that of many people (especially of older generations), and I pulled her up on it. Why would there be no children? Why, just because I'm gay, does that mean I don't want to be a father?

Truth be told, being a dad is a route I've always wanted my life to go down, one day. Until not long ago I envisaged this with the "traditional" wife and kids scenario, before I finally considered myself gay. However, my opinions on this were changed. Just because I'm gay, it doesn't at all mean I can't one day fulfil this dream, and if you're in a loving, long-term relationship and you see this lasting, children become a real option. Adoption and surrogacy are really the only ways to do this. But with homosexuality still, in some circles, seen as "taboo", there's a view, amongst both straight and gay people, that these are harder to achieve than for straight couples who perhaps, for whatever reason, can't have children of their own.

Whether this is true or not is debatable. Last week, Ian "H" Watkins (West End star and former Steps singer) and his long-term partner announced they were having a child by means of a surrogate. When talking about the process on ITV's This Morning, they said they had absolutely no more trouble than a straight couple would going through the same process, and that the stereotypes that exist around this are very much untrue.

I think this is absolutely fantastic news, and congratulations to them. Another famous gay couple, Elton John and David Furnish, went down the same route and Christmas last year welcomed their son Zachary into the family. More and more same-sex couples are having children, by adoption and surrogacy, helping to dampen the taboo surrounding the concept. With this controversy comes major considerations for the couple wishing to have the children. What are the social implications for both the child and parents for having this "unconventional" family? Will the child get bullied at school? How will people react? Personally, I think it would seem public opinion is softening to this considerably. For example, the characters Christian and Syed in Eastenders are among the soap's most popular characters, and their recent adoption storyline (though how it pans out is yet to be seen, with Syed's second thoughts) was very well-received.

I've really only considered having children of my own in a gay relationship in the last 9 months or so. Ideally, the way I'd want to do it is to go down the gestational surrogacy route, as have Ian Watkins and his partner. This is done using an egg donor, IVF to fertilise the egg with one of the couple's sperm, and a separate surrogate. If my life partner has a sister, in an ideal world her, or my own sister, would donate an egg. In the event that his sister would provide the egg, that would be fertilised by my sperm, and if it were my sister's egg, that would be fertilised using his sperm. This way, our children would have no genetic tie to the surrogate, and would be as genetically close to both of us as possible. I'd always be open to adoption of course, but the idea of having a baby that is truly ours is a very happy and comforting thought.

Of course this is alllll hypothetical. Who knows what the future will bring, but this is an ideal situation for me. I just hope that by the time I'm in a position to have children, social acceptance is much higher and me and my partner run into as few issues with the system and social stereotypes as possible.


(Seriously my blog is so random. I'm not sure I know of anyone else who can go from celebrity gossip, to alcoholism, to gay couples having children in one blog! Make sure you subscribe and check back for updates on my wonderfully weird and random thoughts!)