Meet James & Patrick

Location: Dublin, Ireland

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Thank you thank you. That’s what we have to say to start. I think what you are doing to help people is just wonderful. You are going to leave a wonderful mark on this world.

Our names are James and Patrick, and we live in Dublin (Ireland). We were very fortunate to welcome Fionn into the world in Sept 2024. We were filled with utter joy and love when he came along, and we would love to try and complete our family with baby number 2. It was always the plan if we were lucky enough and blessed to try for another baby. I (James) have been living in Dublin for nearly 20yrs, but I grew up in the countryside and had a wonderful childhood growing up on a small farm. I’m very lucky to still have both my parents around and I am one of 5 kids. I also have an identical twin brother which is pretty cool, and we are very close. I am very lucky to have 10 nieces and nephews ranging from 2yrs-16yrs. They are my world, each one of them an utter joy, adorable and just so much fun. They are a major reason why I wanted to be a dad.

I started my own business nearly 14yrs ago. An insurance brokerage, I started the business in the last recession and built it up to where is it today. For many years I didn’t have any time for anything, as I was trying to build up my business. Thankfully over the last number of years I started to pull back and now Fionn is here, I’m lucky enough that I am a stay-at-home dad. Something I thought I would never be able to do or to be honest I didn’t think I would want to do. But since starting on this journey. I thought if I’m going to put this much effort to start a family, if I can afford to do it, I’m going to be with my kids as much as I can. Then when Fionn came along, a full-time dad is all I wanted to be. After deciding to become a dad, this is the best decision I have made in my life. I want to be there for every step of the way for my kids.

I have always wanted to be a dad. When I came out first when I was 20, I hated the fact that I was gay as I was never going to be able to get married or be a father. Thankfully how the world has changed since I was 20. As I saw my siblings get married and have kids my desire to be a father grew even more. Definitely one of the main reasons I want to be a dad is because of Sonny, Frankie, Ellie, Charlie, Cillian, Meave, Osiin, Caluem, Conor, and Fiadbh. My nieces and nephews have brought me such joy, fun and love that I thought wouldn’t be possible. I am mad about each and every one of them and I thought wow if I can have these feelings towards nieces and nephews, imagine if I had my own. I thought surrogacy was for rich and famous people, until a couple I knew appeared on television doing a documentary on Surrogacy. I reached out to one of them through social media after seeing them on TV and asked them to meet me for coffee. This is when I thought I can do this.

Now enough about me, il hand over to Patrick

My name is Patrick and I’m James partner. I have always wanted to be a dad and unfortunately as I got older I found it hard to meet someone who had the same values as me. Fortunately, I met James in march and we clicked straight away. We come from the same background, country boys and off course mamas boys.
I always knew I wanted to be a dad, growing up adopted myself, I saw the unconditional love my parents gave to me, even though I wasn’t genetically linked to them, it didn’t matter, love and support was always there.

Even though I am an only child I never once felt like I was, as my mom had 11 brothers and sisters with the youngest sister being 10 years older than me and only living a few hundred yards from me. I was given every opportunity to try every sport and every pastime possible and that’s where I found dance. It was my world and my parents and grandparents made sure i never missed a lesson. I was very lucky to go and tour the world as lead dancer with Riverdance. I now work with kids teaching dance classes and school holiday camps. I can never get sick of seeing the joys on kids faces or seeing them grow into very special human beings and the accomplishments they achieve through my classes in their own dance careers is just so gratifying. This is what I want to give my family. I want them to flourish in life and to never have any regrets. I honestly thought my time was up and I had come to terms with not being a dad. I owe james my life for allowing me to be part of his journey that he started by himself. James is one of a kind, I have never met someone sooooooo caring and always looking out for everyone else.

All my friends kept asking me was I ready for this, was I afraid, was I nervous? No no & no was my answers. No not once did any of those thoughts come into my head I was so ready for this journey. From the moment I saw fionn and held him he had my heart. I would go to the ends of the earth for that little boy. And I also look at James thinking wow this man has opened up his world to me and allowed me to be part of it and I am forever thankful.

I just would like to say that having another baby would complete our little family we have right now. I know we have sooooooo much more love for another little baby, we would love to see fionn be a big brother someday to guide them thru life also. These kids will not be short of love from not just us but everyone around them.

This will be our 2nd journey trying to become a dad again. On the 27/09/24 we were very happy and thrilled to welcome Fionn into the world. I started this process by myself (James) nearly 3 yrs ago. I really wanted to be a dad, and I was waiting to get into a relationship to start a family. I wasn’t lucky to find a relationship as I was turning 40, so I said, let’s do it, I wanted to be a dad so much so I said il do it by myself. It was a very daunting decision to go at it alone, but one I knew I would never regret. But then as fate would have it, I didn’t have to do it alone as the most amazing man entered into my life, that is Patrick. I was so lucky with the entire process. I got matched very quickly with my amazing surrogate Jennette, our 1st transfer was successful, and we just steamed ahead. When I was 4 weeks pregnant, I met Patrick online. I was very reluctant to tell him straight away that I was 4 weeks pregnant as I thought he would run a mile. But quite the opposite. He was the one that asked did I want kids, and I said yes, that I was in the process of doing surrogacy. How far into the process was I? Again, reluctant to say I was 4 weeks pregnant as I thought that would be it. I just came out with it and said yes I was 4 weeks pregnant, and if he didn’t want to go on a 1st date, I would totally understand. He came back straight away, and said that he wanted to meet me even more. He said he never meet anyone that wanted to have kids. So there kicked off an amazing connection and relationship. When we both were single for a long time, we both knew what we wanted and thankfully we found that in each other. Wanting to start a family was a major part of that. We have very similar family backgrounds and childhoods. I come from a very large extended family with 27 1st cousins and Patrick has 30 1st cousins. So family and children are a major part of our lives. Fionn came along very early at 32 weeks, and we spent 30 days in intensive care with him. Thankfully all was good in the end, and we have a very healthy thriving boy. I don’t know how I could have done it without Patrick by my side. We were spending 14hrs a day in the hospital with him. When we were telling the nurses about our amazing story that we only met last March, and the amazing relationship we have with Jennette, they couldn’t believe our incredible story. Most certainly spending 30 days in NICU taught us that things can happen to your klids, but you will be there for them 24/7 no matter what. The unconditional love you have for this little human being and their needs. We were doing skin to skin with Fionn for 14hrs every day to give him the best possible chance of growing and just feeling that his daddies were there for him. It was certainly in those early moments that we knew what it took to be dads and until we die we are there for that boy no matter what.

How I matched with Jennette? I was told it would take 2yrs to get matched on average, I was matched in 3 months. Jennette is truly an amazing lady like all surrogates are. She is married with 2 of her own kids and always wanted to help someone have their own kids. She had said for no particular reason that she wanted to help a heterosexual couple and not necessary a single gay guy, which is what I was at the time. But after 25 profiles that were sent to her, mine was sent to her by mistake and she told me that when she saw my video, she said that’s him, that’s who I want to have a baby for. We then “dated” for 3 weeks but after 10 days we told the agency, we were the ones for each other. I had asked why did you pick me out of the 25 profiles that had been sent to her. She said the message of my video was one of love and support and that I was mad about kids having 10 nieces and nephews. It wasn’t what I was going to offer the child financially what she felt a lot of the other videos were about. It was all about the love and child centeredness that came across from my video. From the very start I was there for Jennette. I told her when she needed me, I would turn into a “Karen” for her lol. There was plenty of times that Jennette wasn’t getting the right support in the right timeframe, and I would get involved straight away and make things move along for her. We were in communication nearly every day. When she booked in for her transfer, I didn’t want her doing it on her own. So, I rang up the agency and said do international parents ever fly over for the 1st transfer and they told me never. Well, I was going to change that. I flew over to Canada just for the weekend and was there with Jennette for the transfer. I was thrilled I got to do that, to be there but also to see what this amazing person had to go through to help me start my family. I called it the positivity train. We would send each other mems and jokes about trains every week as we went along with the pregnancy. So, what did Jennette do when Fionn came along? she got a beautiful colourful tattoo of a train to remember Fionn. The more I thought her beautfil gesture for Fionn, I wanted to get something, I got a tattoo of train tracks. I was the train tracks, and she was the train, and we got to the final station with Fionn getting offboard. Patrick got a tattoo of Fionns footprint and his name. I was very lucky when Jennete was 6 weeks pregnant she came on holidays with her husband on an already planned vacation to Ireland. She met all my family, stayed in my house and something very special happened, just by chance we had our 1st scan in Ireland. Very very special times hanging out with Jennette and her husband, getting to know them even more.

Myself and Patrick are different personalities but share so much of the same values as we have said before. But from our shared experiences we will create a home that is full of love, laughter, opportunities and fun. We had a fun journey, joyful, stress free time, 1st time round with Fionn and we promise we will make that happen again if we are lucky enough go be chosen.

What we did for Jennette and what we would have to do if we are matched again is be right there for our surrogate. We want to be there every time she needs support or doesn’t feel as if she isn’t getting enough support. We are very lucky to have 8 embryos left. I paid extra for our embryos to be graded. So when we did our 1st transfer we were able to know it was a grade A embryo and there are a number of grade A embryos left, giving us such a good chance of pregnancy 1st time around. Jennette and I were learning as went when we went through this process. I feel now if we are lucky enough to start another journey, we have been there, done that and it would be a much easier journey 2nd time around. What this experience will do is give our future surrogate the peace of mind that we got your back, and we know what is ahead of us.

Thank you so much for considering myself and Patrick and we hope we have given a favour of us and the parents we will continue to be if we are lucky enough to have a 2nd baby and complete our family.

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