You never wanted kids. I was to say, I remember you saying you wanted kids.
You never really said what process you're going down?
Well you are now you're going down the process now.
I looked into it just before lockdown and that ruined. Well, I didn't ruin it stoped divisions and we had had meetings, but I was going to go.
To America for adoptionalrog and it would have been guaranteed.
With disservice.
Is the American way of doing it very didn't to the UK and Europe, where you're literally you are you've got their antal rights straight away and not it's not like it's a business, but there are people it is.
But it sounds quite immersedly when you say like that.
There are people in America who are quite happy to.
Be a surrogate. Yeah, and mainly mothers themselves. Some have them it multiple times.
And you get a choice of a grew age range of the surrogate.
Yeah, you're picking them around and you have meetings with a database, and you obviously kind a chance to interview.
That person before we have a meeting.
Meeting, and right, do you use the ink or do you choose an egg?
Two options you can either use their ink or do.
MH and depending on the on the kind of type of surrogate is what is where that decision would come from. And you also get to be involved in all their medical checkups and even at the bird you can't be there amazed.
So did you get to meet anyone or you didn't get that far?
We didn't get that far. We would win this clo.
It was an agency we're going to use and the thing X amount and guaranteed child sometimes even twins depending on you know, and you get the screening thing you were talking.
Yeahs, I think I have loved twins or triplets mine.
Because then you get the connection of.
Going out there meeting them and you pay all the upfront and there's not there's nothing more to pay on.
It's just the process. Yeah.
No, I had a friend that did it in America.
Oh yeah, she.
Should. You think you'll look at it again.
I think I will look at it again that's excited and has had a friend you know some I know a friend of mine.
Married a couple has lesbian throne.
A friend of you was married a couple and like to like jay lesbians and they cope, which.
They have three kids. Between them and the kids.
Do they all live together like weekends?
Yeah? So one week parents all want you in love?
Yeah.
I mean that's the main thing, isn't it.
Yeah? Yeah?
So would you go with donor or would you go Do you have a friend or something?
I did speak to a friend a while ago, and then I spoke.
To a couple of meat meetings, a couple of connections with strangers, but they were both in the UK, and because didn't know them that well, and one of them was very interested in the co caring things.
Just wanted I wouldn't be adverse if it was the right person.
But I guess you don't know them long enough to know that's right.
That's the life long.
It's effectively marrying that other couple forever.
Yeah, what I was I going to say? Would you use your sperm or hugh sperm or you don't know yet?
I don't know yet. I mean I'm very clean to use your whatever left and.
Big Dad you would still yeah, heaps, men's sperm doesn't really deteriorate when if they could do it in the sense that you could both donate and.
Draw people.
I have a friendice of that too, he and is they both They like, we don't want to choose so fair.
Yeah I do that, or you could have two kids and use one of me.
Do but I mean, we're this close. They had meeting. It was all over zoom at that point. Yeah, you know in America. And then the representative of the agency came to London and I met up with them, had a really good productive chat and what and it was a lot of money.
Yeah.
One thing that Clink Ships knew was that it was guaranteed multiple trials if it doesn't succeed. Okay, yeah, yes, so you felt like yeah, to avoid disappointment. And also at the end of the term, you go make the arrangements and they also arrange the birth certificate and.
Then you just fly over there for the birth and.
So there probably a few weeks before the birth and then a few weeks afterwards you take your baby down and the baby's got dual nationality straight away.
Amazing.
Yeah, UK and America.
That's cool. Oh, I hope that works out for you.
I I think that's the tricky think about like IVA is that it's not always guaranteed, so so much upfront costs and you can end up process you can go again and again and again and again, and you can get to the engines. Well even that's just what I did for mine, like fifteen grand weeks of injections, and I walked over nothing.
I was like, wow, it's really tough.
I was like, yes, we just start again. Find someone my me, she has been in here. Have you been thinking about it in here listening to everyone talks about.
Their kids, because it's it's.
Like when everyone's talking about it, Oh my god, it sounds amazing.
It sounds amazing. I really missed that.
And I said, I think I said it before that that when you talk about Felix.
I mean, I don't know if you're aware of this, your your eyes just get a little bit.
Yeah, you're obsessed.
Yeah, I mean that.
My friends said to me, you've probably heard it as well. That instant love you have for this human.
Being like that you never experienced, you never experienced, you know, it's amazing.
I want that. I want to feel that, and I want to.
I was going to I said before, I don't think my life an complete.
I didn't have that, you know, not.
That religious, but the moss the meaning of life, what's the purpose if we're not going to pass on what we know and our knowledge to this person who hopefully is going.
To change the world be an amazing human being.
Yeah, I think it's also I don't know about you, but a big part of its two is because I've always been on the fence, and then when I met Ben's I look at him and I'd be like, you would be wasted, not as like I want to see him as a dad, whereas I haven't really felt that before, and I'm like, I would hate for you to not have that opportunity.
Yeah, I'm not big decision.
It's a big decision. My friends have all that adoption.
That all good and if you want to go down, great, And for me, it's such an eternal drive.
Yeah, you want one of your own, and I have no doubt if you adopted, you would love it just as much. But I understand why you would want one of your bloods.
Yeah.
I also love.
The idea that you can be at all of the medical appointments.
They're so exciting, and then the birth is.
So can you imagine and you're there and the people I was talking to this, I look, we researched it, I've got advice from friends, we spoke to three or four agencies, varying in prized from one to nearly two. But the one that really read, they're not they're based playing in Pittsburgh. Just hands on and you could see no, I mean you could do it also in like Eastern Europe.
Well, a lot of the American ones aren't from Eastern Europe as well.
A lot of the American ones, Well, the surrogates have come from Europe to America and that's what they're that's what they're doing a lot of Ukrainians.
Yeah, but yes, it's even I just had a friend, Oh my god, in Australia.
She just before the war Russia Ukraine had she had bought tried four prints, easy easy, and she's in a forty. So they went for Saragac. They flew their embryo over to Ukraine.
Then war broke out and she was already their sorry, was pregnant in Ukraine and then for the birth they flew there to get it and we're in a war zone. They were in a bunker with their newborn baby. It was this is only they only brought it home six months ago.
Wild were they stuck over there?
They were stuck there for a couple of weeks and then the embassies helped get them out that they had to they you wouldn't just get out because they had to try and organize these birth certificates and transports, like they're not stealing it.
It was the worst time. I mean, there's no good time in for war. But like she was like, what do you do? Like, that's my child now you know that I have put in a war zone.
Crazy, But they got everyone was safe, the mom where they looked after them a lot, like yeah, you know the family, the surrogates family. But what do you do?
You can't not Everyone's like you're crazy, you can't go into a war zone.
And she's like, my child is now in there, Like could you imagine that predicament?
I should speak to her on the podcast.
Actually, I imagine the stress that she would have felt stake if she couldn't get.
Over there and then home.
Well, then the husband had to leave her in the bunker.
With a baby to try and go to the embassy on his own to like imagine leaving your partner in newborn and he's like just don't move and came back like four days later or something because he had to travel.
Yeah, pretty crazy. I think it takes a really long time passport.
Was that the first sect?
Yeah, I think I I might have talked about it on the radio or something, because somebody got in touch with me on social media and she was like, I might think I look crazy if I'm in a relationship with my girlfriend go acting marriage?
Would we think you're funny? Would resinkly be the perfect dad to do? And I feel like you yeah, yeah, because I didn't know his mom's back. It's just so weird, and I was back paranoid. Is it oppressed, sting?
Is it all of those kind of where she was probably just being nice.
Yeah.
And then about three years they turn, she got in touch on me again and they found someone admitted to you.
Wow, I'm sure they send.
You the fight.
I said, their two year old girl that you weren't to know.
So yeah, if you ask your friends, maybe go.
Down the scene.
Yeah.
Yeah. She had.
Exactly beout not that lucky at the start. A few goes, and I think there was a miss pay and then.
When they were just about getting ready to go again, she had to have an operation, an abdominant operation.
Something went wrong.
So after like a year to eighteen months of trying with one.
They had to find a new. Sorry yet so she's spent a long time trying to get her trial. But I got there in the end.