Welcome!

Hello and welcome!

I have no clue who will find my journey interesting, but it is quite a developing story. I suppose it began 12 years ago when I met my partner. We fell in love and have been in a monogamous relationship ever since. We're pretty average guys leading average lives and not really a part of the gay community in our city, although we have a few gay couple friends in our neighborhood. I'm white, he's African American, and we're close in age. We live in a nice house in a newer neighborhood where neighbors are close and supportive.

So what's the interesting part? We're soon to become parents of twins via egg donor and surrogate. Not until next year, so there's still plenty of time to freak out. Currently our surrogate is eight weeks along. We both flew to California for the embryo transfer in early September, and she knew a week later that she was pregnant. The babies will be half African American, half white to reflect our races and look a bit like both of us.

We have ultrasound pictures of the two black blobs in our surrogate's womb stuck to the front of our stainless, side-by-side refrigerator in our pristine kitchen. After growing up with a mother who felt it necessary to cover the entire refrigerator with magnets, papers, ads, and coupons, I swore my refrigerator would always be clutter free. But here I am, 8 weeks into fatherhood, already breaking my own rule. A side of me fears this will eventually lead to the refrigerator becoming a canvas for our children's artwork - stick figures, scribbles, hand outline turkeys made from construction paper. But I'm in a state of change. Our house looks like a model - colors coordinated, furniture carefully chosen, everything in it's place. I'm a neat freak - probably a direct result of being a gay man who grew up in a cluttered, disorganized home. Now I look around the house, wondering what will need to go, what needs more organization, and where all the baby gear will be. There's no way to keep a model home with twin babies. Eventually I'll teach them the art of putting things back and making beds. But for now, I'm reconditioning myself to keep a clean, but less organized home.

So many gay men seem to be anti-children. They're loud, messy, and expensive. When my partner first brought up the idea of a baby, all I could think of was sticky figerprints, poopy diapers, screaming, and a major interruption of my life. It's easy to see why gay men feel this way. Most of us dropped the idea of kids from our minds way back when we realized we were gay. It's just not expected of us and not always even possible. But times are changing - especially for me.

I'm going to post a bit back in time to give a sense of how we arrived at this day in our relationship and how a once self described "happily childless" gay man finds himself standing in the empty nursery-to-be, fondly imagining the pounding of little feet on hardwood floors, giggles, crying, and late night feedings - activities that will happen in the room in the next few years.