Hold onto your hats, people, because this isn’t some kind of weird Jerry Springer episode – this is an amazing feat of science that made dads out of not one, but two men who otherwise might never have experienced fatherhood.
Simon and Graeme Berney-Edwards are a married gay couple who knew two things for sure: they wanted a family, and they would need IVF and a willing surrogate to make that happen.
Enter Meg, a 32-year-old mother willing to be a surrogate after a split with her own partner.
“I saw Simon and Graeme’s profile on a surrogacy website, and I thought they had lovely smiles,” she told MSN.
They matched up, and Simon and Graeme soon flew to a Los Angeles fertility clinic to fertilize the embryos. When they got there, though, they realized they hadn’t made all of the important decisions – like who would be their child’s biological father.
“When we spoke to the doctor at the clinic he stunned us with his reply. He told us that it could be both of us,” explained Simon. “That we could have half the embryos fertilized with my sperm and then half with Graeme’s sperm.”
Six months later, one embryo fertilized by each of them was surgically put into Meg’s uterus. The three had met at that point, and were getting on famously.
“We didn’t know how to thank her. We told her we were so grateful to her – she was changing not only our lives but our families, too.”
Even though both embryos were inserted, there was no way to predict that both would implant…but they did, meaning Meg was pregnant with twins who had different fathers.
Simon and Graeme flew to Meg’s hometown when she thought she was in labor at 31 weeks (false alarm!) and stayed until the twins – Alexandra and Calder – were born at 36 weeks.
“When we both held them for the first time, we couldn’t believe we were both daddies. It was a long way to go and do this, but it was worth it to both be able to have fathered one of the twins each.”
The babies are technically half-siblings who are also twins, which I’m guessing makes them one of the most unique sibling pairs in the world.
Meg and the happy dads have kept in touch – they call her the Tummy Mummy – which puts a neat little bow on this sweet, amazing story if you ask me.
Science, man. What miracles will it give us next?
