“First they bathe him, then inject him, two injections, one hep B and the other BCG. You are not allowed to carry him or touch him for twenty-four hours but tomorrow you can come to feed him, two times in one day, 10am and 6pm so I think better you take turns, one at a time only. He will stay here for four days and if everything is OK on the fourth day, you can bring him home. He is well and a very healthy baby. I am so happy for you.”
We nod our heads to agree, hardly digesting much of what Kay has said, our eyes still fixated on him.
“Does he have a name? The nurse wants to put it in the records and on the baby’s bed so you know which one is your baby when you come later,” she asks.
There is silence from us and she asks again.
“Does your son have a name?”
We both look at each other and then again at him. We know which of the names we picked suits him most.
“Yes, yes, he does,” Jayson stammers.
“We will call him Roman, Roman Elias Brunsdon,” he says.
“Yes, he is a Roman – our son, powerful and strong, from the Bible,” I whisper to Jayson.
“Our little emperor, a gladiator, he fought his way to us,” Jayson adds.
“Yes, so true, he has.”
For the next two hours, we watch how they primp, poke and clean Roman and at each action he wails, like most newborns do. When he settles, he is calmer. We can’t stop staring at his every move. We are glued to the glass watching him. We can’t quite work out who he looks like, perhaps neither of us at the moment because all babies look the same.
He looks Chinese, I think for a minute, perhaps the genes of my father’s father and Rebecca’s grandmother. Our faces are affixed to the window. We whisper words through the glass, like how much we love him already, how lucky we are and that he is the most beautiful baby in the world.
After more than two hours, we return to the hotel to call and notify our close circle of friends. We text a generic message:
“Today, the 5 January, 2015, at 10.15am, our son Roman Elias Brunsdon was born. Weighing 3.2kgs, he is doing well, with lots of black hair, photos to come.”
Then we ring our parents and shed joyful tears. We want to go back to the hospital, though we aren’t allowed to hold or touch him today; we want to watch him through the window again. He is our baby, our child, and we want to see him again.
At 5pm, after downing two glasses of chilled Moët bubbly, we are once again standing outside the window to the nursery, this time surrounded by several other gay couples. There are a couple from Seattle whose baby is two days days old, an Asian couple from Perth who had triplets, a Canadian also with triplets, a Bohemian-looking hippy couple with twins, and Tim and Scott, who had a baby girl, Bonnie Rose, which I knew from their constant posts on Facebook, “Scott and Tim’s excellent adventure”.
I had never imagined so many gay men congregating outside a nursery, all gaga over their babies.
It is emotional, and we feel privileged. Everyone compares notes, asking question after question about our origins, and most want to know how many babies we have just had. I am happy to reply “one”, and I feel sorry for the couples who had three, but they don’t seem too worried about it, and are busily exchanging notes on the paperwork, embassy and visa requirements for their babies. I find myself playing Mother Teresa and offering important information to the couples.
Some are hysterically bragging about their baby’s weight and size like proud new parents do.
“My baby weighed four point four kilos at birth. This means he won’t be kicked around at school when someone says ‘your daddy’s gay’,” says one of the Seattle couple.
“Good for you, mate. We are Asians so our babies are smaller, but we have three of them. You could fight one off on the school field but three, you would think again. Look at them, aren’t they adorable?” says the Australian.
“Are you the biological father?” the Canadian asks me.
“No, my partner is but my cousin is our egg donor, so he has both of us in him,” I say proudly, marvelling at him in his cot.
“Oh, really? Why didn’t you want one of yourself too?” he asks inquisitively. I want to slap him for his indiscretion.
“Because we do not want three babies, or even two for that matter,” I reply.
“True. I figure we are going to have a pretty rough time coping when we get home so we are getting mileage out of being here as long as possible. We have a nanny to help us here and we can’t afford one in Perth, even with the new government grants,” says Kevin the Australian.
Tim and Scott interrupt. Tim asks us which one is Roman, while Scott is preparing to enter to feed Bonnie Rose, born yesterday.
After twenty minutes of boasting, comparing notes and deciding whose baby is the best, we say goodbye to the other gay dads. Tomorrow, Jayson will do the first feed and he is looking forward to being with his son for the first time.
“I felt like I was on the set of a Divine movie,” Jayson says of the hospital’s feeding room. His words amused me so much I used them as my mantra for weeks and weeks.
He wants to see his son so badly he hardly sleeps the night. The excitement of being a first-time dad is an unprecedented emotion.
At around 10am, the security guard stationed outside the nursery checks all passports against the faces in his file. He is ensuring only authorised people enter the feeding room. Jayson is one of them today.
Jayson is ushered into a little room first; there he wears plastic outergarments, and on his head a shower cap like I did yesterday, and lastly, every father has to wear a pink robe. We wonder why they are pink, and think maybe because most of their clients in the hospital are homosexuals. In fact, like yesterday, all of the visitors today are gay dads. The overall look is gay. Christmas hampers would seem less camp. Jayson washes his hands before sitting in a clinical medium-sized room. Inside are several large chairs neatly arranged in two rows. There are partitions between the chairs to create little dens and clusters of gay male families.
The room is decorated with camp flamingo-pink wallpaper, and the furniture in the hospital is green. A senior nurse comes into the feeding room, familiarising herself first with the pink-robed fathers. She disappears and returns a few seconds later, wheeling in a baby in a cot and yelling out the surrogate mother’s name.
“Suwadee,” she calls out.
The Asian couple raise their hands. She wheels the baby to them.
“Pensri,” she calls out; the Canadian with the triplets takes ownership.
“OK, baby number one,” she says while indicating with her fingers that there were two more to come.
She repeats the process until the fifth baby, who makes a grand entrance. He is ours.
“Ittiporn.”
“Yes,” says Jayson. She smiles and hands Roman to him.
In the next hour, six or more gay dads sit in the ward, feeding their newborns and listening to each other talk gibberish, smile and laugh with their babies. Jayson gets a two-minute crash course from the nurse on what to do. The feeding part is easy but the burping thing scares him a bit. We are taught to feed him about half the 90-millilitre bottle of formula, then stop, sit him upright and gently pat his back in circular motions to bring on the burp. After you hear the digestive sound, you recline him again and feed him the other half of the bottle. He remains asleep much throughout.
The men sit and chat with each other. Everyone shares stories, experiences of what has brought them to Bangkok and how, what their partners think, what dreams they have for their children and mostly why surrogacy has been outlawed in Thailand. We all wish things were different.
“We are one of the last batches,” Kevin says.
In the next two months there would be another hundred cases, but this was it for the future of surrogacy in Thailand – this batch would go down in history, never to happen again.
“One day when our kids are old enough, we will tell them the story of the gay dads’ ward and how these fi
ne men sat in a ward in their pink robes feeding their surrogate children,” he jokes.
While Jayson is feeding Roman, I take a trip down the road to buy some fruit, cakes and biscuits. I am going to go see Porn. I feel it is important she knows we care and I don’t want her to feel ignored now that she has delivered. I want her to know how grateful we are.
I shop at the nearby markets and, with a couple of heavy plastic bags filled with food, I head to the ward on the seventh floor where Porn is. As I am waiting for the lifts, a man with an older woman taps me on the shoulder and it takes me a few seconds to realise it is Mr Yankee himself, Porn’s husband. We nod at each other and he introduces the woman with him as “Porn’s mama”.
I tell him I am on my way to see Porn, unsure if he understands what I am saying, but with some sign language he understands the food is for her. We go up to her room and she has just woken up from yesterday’s anaesthetic. She is bandaged but happy to see us all.
“You happy?” she asks.
“Yes, happy, very happy,” I reply.
She smiles contentedly. The triumphant delivery, mission accomplished.
“Jayson feeding baby.” I act out the feeding of a baby in my arms, and the bottle feed.
She understands, which encourages me to continue communicating but, apart from the few obvious sign language messages, it’s a struggle. Her family looks on at the conversation, not understanding much either. They look at each other for approval, bewildered and hoping the other understands my drift. They all nod in unison, making it obvious no one understood anything.
“You pain?” I asked, referring to her stomach.
She shakes her head, pointing to the bandage on her stomach. “Good,” she replies.
“Oh, good,” I second. “Baby very good,” I say, again motioning the baby in my arms. “Very good boy. Drink milk, no cry,” I add.
She turns to look at her family, wondering if anyone knows what I am saying.
A whole heap of nodding comes from the group, and I’m sure no one understands anything except for the words “happy” and “baby”.
“Thank you,” I reply, feeling emotional. “Kop Khun Khrap. We very happy.”
She smiles and bows her head in a prayer sign, one to reflect her own happiness for the opportunity.
I hug her and bid farewell to the family, telling her I will return tomorrow with more food. Once again, I assume no one really understands me.
32
The Embassy
We have one big, important thing to do today and that is to return to the Australian Embassy. We have made an appointment to meet the first secretary and consul, Trudy McGowan. Trudy was recently made famous in a hit Channel 9 TV series, The Embassy, a reality show about the busy embassy’s work and how its staff assist Australian citizens who have got themselves into trouble in Thailand. Each week, a new crisis from Bangkok appears on our screens at home.
One episode showed a young Melbourne traveller who had been busted for drugs, left broke and broken-hearted by an unreliable lover. There was another about a miner whose Thai girlfriend scammed him and abandoned him to a fate inside the famous “Bangkok Hilton” prison.
Within a month of screening on prime time TV at 6.30pm, the show became one of Australia’s highest rating. Viewers glued themselves to their sets to watch Trudy. She became a household name, a celebrity among viewers who marvelled at her ways of helping Australians get out of holes.
In one of the episodes, she helped a couple to leave Bangkok with their surrogate-born baby. This gave her the reputation for being the embassy’s surrogacy expert. She became known to intended parents in Australia on their way to Thailand. Couples were flocking to the embassy, asking to meet the celebrity, wanting her help to ensure a fast and easy exit out of Bangkok. For weeks during the turmoil, Trudy fought hard for surrogacy families.
“They are sensitive people that could lose their cool without any warning,” she says of the junta. She didn’t want negative media that would upset them. Trudy became the go-between person between Australian citizens and the Thai government, a lifesaver to many.
A mother herself, the baby-faced Trudy is in her mid-thirties, buxom, bubbly, with mid-length blonde hair and a larger than life personality. The minute you meet her, you can’t help feeling drawn to her. Trudy married an Australian who also worked for Foreign Affairs and, together with their two children, they have lived in Bangkok for several years.
Trudy is hilariously funny, like the naughty younger sister who is part of the gang. She tells us stories about people she has helped, including baby Gammy himself. Trudy started a fundraising campaign to help Gammy. At first, this involved ringing and emailing friends, the need being apparent after she heard about Januba (the surrogate mother), whom I believe would have approached her office too. It was this small gesture of goodwill and kindness she bestowed on Gammy, without any idea that it would grow into such an international donation effort, which made it a huge story worldwide and grew to over half a million dollars raised for the Down syndrome child.
Trudy tells us about how she, like many others, has a soft spot for Gammy, keeping a close watch on him and his surrogate mother’s position. She cites the simpleness of the life they lead and how much his mother loves him. We ask Trudy about Gammy’s current status but she refuses to discuss it, only saying that the embassy is working around the clock to ensure he is looked after and possibly given rights as an Australian because of his biological father’s citizenship. This would entitle Gammy to proper medical attention for his heart condition without any prevailing costs, removing this burden from the already poor mother.
She is extremely entertaining, whispering to us that we could buy good Australian wines from “Dan Murphy’s a few blocks from here.”
“But do keep this to yourselves,” she urges, fearing the Tempus Two sauvignon blanc, a favourite of hers, would sell out. “You must not miss the Gin Bar at the W Hotel, across the street from the Ascott,” she adds.
Trudy is aware of Jayson’s work and understands she isn’t handling an everyday case. She is silently afraid his celebrity status would affect the work she has done with surrogacy. She wants to ensure we have the best advice her office could render, knowing very well that our transactions would adhere to a strict code of privacy, to be kept within the walls of the embassy.
Our one-hour meeting with Trudy is far more than entertaining. She tells us stories of Australian citizens stuck in Thailand, most only rocking up at the embassy if they have problems. One funny story was about a man who slept with a lady boy who later stole his credit card. The man showed up at the embassy the next day, looking for advice on what to tell his wife in Sydney. He asked Trudy for help to concoct a believable story his wife would digest.
“Do I look like someone’s pimp?” She laughs heartily. “And there have been so many more serious cases. I could sit here and tell you the stories for hours. Everything you watch on the show, it’s as real as it can get.”
We worry after seeing the big sign on the front door notifying that a documentary was being shot.
“Should we be hiding?” I ask.
“No, you’re fine. Channel Nine covered surrogacy last season. I promise – you’re so fine, you bunch of famous fashion designers.” She chuckles away.
But the cameraman had recognised Jayson earlier and smiled at him. Trudy reassures us the embassy is protective of the privacy of its citizens.
Trudy explains the bureaucratic process from birth till we leave Bangkok – what we will need to do and how long each step will take us. Because Roman had just been born earlier that day, it would take a few days to get his Thai birth certificate. Once we receive this, we will need to get it translated into English at a certified translation office. There are plenty of these in Silom and in the nearby districts. Kay knows of a good one in Phloen Chit; the translator there does all of the UK Embassy’s work.
“Nothing can go further till you have these two important documents,”
she warns. “Once you have these in hand, you fill out form one hundred and eighteen, which is an application for the child’s Australian citizenship by descent. Commonwealth law recognises all children born outside Australia on or after twenty-sixth of January nineteen forty-nine are eligible for Australian citizenship by descent,” she says of the fourteen-page long intricate and detailed application.
“Study it carefully before you attempt to fill in the mountain of paperwork,” she adds, not knowing that I have already spent hours, if not days, on the complex forms.
We also have to submit other documents, including a copy of Porn’s ID card or passport, the surrogacy agreement and, most importantly, the DNA test results of the biological parent – the test Jayson completed in Australia before arriving in Bangkok. The test had to be done in an accredited DNA laboratory, one the embassy approved of. Suspecting a long wait to get the results back in Thailand, we paid extra for an express service. Thank Christ for it, well worth the couple of hundred dollars. Jayson and I had gone to Macquarie Street to do the DNA test at the Douglas Hanly Moir laboratory a few months ago, where a quick swab of Jayson’s throat was taken and later analysed.
The fun bit, though, was to provide a passport-sized photograph of Roman, one with his eyes open; I mean, try taking a picture of a newborn with his eyes open. The nurses at the hospital helped us and even after more than fifty attempts, none worked. The brief was simple, “eyes open”, but our Roman refused to cooperate. Finally, after more than an hour, he was so over the disturbance that he relented. He opened his eyes for a second, just enough time for us to take the picture.
Once we have filled out all the necessary documents, we must get them witnessed before lodging the completed dossier with the Immigration Department. Consular officials will work on them for a few days and do background checks before someone will contact us to arrange for Roman’s DNA test. Blood samples drawn from him will be sent back to a laboratory in Australia via an express courier. The test results must be conclusive before Immigration makes its decision.
Designer Baby Page 26
