My wife and I had met a few Pride Angel guys by the time we met P and G. There was the man who lunged straight in with “So, how many days out of each week would I have the child?”, the man who was off to Thailand the following day to begin a surrogacy process, the very nice man whom we talked to a lot…but basically didn’t get around to discussing actual parenting with. The list goes on (a little) and they were nice guys but not what we were looking for.
P and G were different. We liked them straight away and after our first casual coffee we’d got a great sense of their personalities and genuine intentions. We were optimistic but cautious – should we text them? Suddenly we were being girly girls! We wanted to tell them what a nice time we’d had but weren’t sure about making the first move. Minutes later an enthusiastic exclamation mark-filled text popped through – they seemed to have enjoyed the meet up too!
We spent the next year getting to know each other. We had meals out and meals in. It wasn’t a deliberate or planned length of time. When we’d started looking we weren’t quite sure what we were looking for - someone between a known donor and a co-parent – or how to arrange the parenting. But somehow we’d met some lovely guys who seemed to be coming from the same place as us. And that was the best start we could have hoped for. Our relationship together continued to evolve. We decided to go ahead with our conception one stunning summer’s day following a delicious pub roast together (eating was a feature of our ‘dates’ of course!), it seemed like the right time.
In terms of legals we discussed what to do and wrote statements of intent – one from each couple – to discuss and list expectations towards the child that reflected our parenting values. This really helped as when we realised they were a good match it gave us all much more confidence going forward. We couldn’t detail everything; we also agreed that some of the parenting would have to ‘evolve’ as there was so much we just didn’t know yet.
The boys were amazing about the conception. We’d had a few worries about getting the sperm in the syringe but they did it all for us, placing what we needed on a neatly folded towel. All very civilised! And three months later we are in the early stages of pregnancy. Again, the P and G have been amazing about the news and they’re just excited as we are. We couldn’t have asked for more perfect co-parents and the future looks bright. Ok the baby will be a little over-loved with four such caring parents but that’s a good issue to have.
Pride Angel has proved to be fantastic for us as I am sure it has for many many others. We can’t believe how far we’ve come and that our little plan, hatched two years ago, is coming to fruition.