Two Beards and a Baby: Recent Episodes
Kirk and Anthony
Two Beards and a Baby Podcast is hosted by Kirk and Anthony, a married couple from Portland, Oregon. Several years ago, they decided to pursue starting their family through surrogacy. Follow them through the ups and downs of this experience.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions and rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told, and some choose to believe it. I know they’re wrong, wait and see.
Some day we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.
The last four years of our surrogacy journey has been 90% waiting. We haven’t shared much about our waiting process. We do have an occasional conversation about our path to fatherhood. It usually ends with everyone feeling powerless or full of radical ideas about how to make it happen.
The truth is this was never going to be an easy journey. We always knew that it would be an emotional roller coaster, although there is no amount of awareness that could make our current situation any less painful. We haven't really posted much of our story in 2017, so consider this post a re-cap.
In this episode, we share sad news about our first attempt to create embryos through egg donation and IVF.
Since recording this, we have learned that our fertility clinic, Oregon Reproductive Medicine, is fully committed to helping us to become parents and will be supporting us through a second round of egg donation and IVF.
Special thanks to Ivy Ross Ricci for allowing us to use her song "Density Change" from her forthcoming album It's Hard to Know, which will be released later this year. The song is performed by Ivy and was written by Dan Kubick.
To hear more of Ivy's music, visit https://ivyrossricci.bandcamp.com/
“This feels like online dating in a really weird way,” Kirk said the first time we logged onto the egg donor database in late December 2016.
We were confronted with a search screen and a number of different options to search for height, weight, hair color, eye color, and a number of other physical characteristics. As we scrolled through the list, we noticed quickly that we were less concerned about specific physical characteristics.
Dear Future Grown Child,
By the time you’re old enough to read this and appreciate it, I’m sure that you’ll know that life isn’t always easy. I’m sure you’ll be bored of me telling stories about the past and urging you to read more history books. I’m sure that this particular moment will seem, even in the retrospect of your short life, ancient history. But for us right now living through the early days of the Trump presidency, it’s hard to imagine what that future will look like.
Today is the most crucial day in our campaign! We need to get as many contributions as we can on DAY ONE. Check out our new video where we talk about memories from our wedding day and how close we are to growing our family!
We did it. We finally signed a contract with a surrogacy agency. This puts our timeline at 12-18 months until another tiny human being takes over our home and our lives.
While we continue crunching numbers and looking at spreadsheets with line items that say things like "Carrier Contract: Legal Representation for IP's", "Transfer Fee", "GC compensation", and "Egg Donor Cycle Fee", the world moves madly on. Political meltdowns, terror after terror, record global temperatures, and unarmed black people being murdered all while the world watches on Facebook and TV. I think about how I'd rather be blogging about good news like a healthy pregnancy or a baby birth. I want to share my thoughts on optimism and happiness. But I must write about the chaos and sadness of current events because this too is part of the story.
I discovered Men Having Babies in the winter of 2014. I had been doing some research on financing a surrogacy journey and their website came up. Men Having Babies is a non-profit organization that began in 2005 as a peer support group for biological gay fathers and fathers to be.
It's not easy to be a parent-in-waiting. We spend every day thinking about something we want so much, to add children to our family through surrogacy. But we're at a point in our journey that there's no measurable progress most days. It can be difficult sometimes even just seeing a random family on the street and wishing that it were us.
We have no doubt that we'll be fathers some day, but it sometimes feels like Christmas Eve used to, back when we were 7 years old, only this is the longest Dec. 24th ever.
In conversations with friends and strangers who are already parents, we've noticed some trends. People who are already parents sometimes suggest that maybe this whole parent thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. We know it's not going to be easy—it's already taken us much more work than most families—but it can sometimes be disheartening to hear the following phrases from folks who are already parents.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/24327-three-things-parents-say-parents-waiting/
"Is that table sticky at all?" the barista asked as she walked over with my pot of tea.
"Yeah," I told her. " But only a little. I wiped it down. I knew what I was getting into coming here. You guys are super kid friendly."
That was a bit of an understatement this Saturday afternoon. When I'd walked in, almost every table in the place was taken over by families with small children. There was the banging of toys and at least one high chair surrounded by pieces of sweet potato that had been turned into air-to-surface projectiles.
This wasn't quite the atmosphere that I was looking for when I decided to head out for some tea and writing. But here I was. I might as well make the most of it.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/24114-kids-everywhere-except-our-home/
It's officially autumn here in the Pacific Northwest. Each night the sun drops behind the West Hills of Portland a little earlier than the night before. Every October, I am reminded that this is actually my favorite season. Our CSA is filled with all kinds and shades of squash. The air is crisp, but it's still warm enough to be in a T-shirt.
My attention shifts to fantasies about future Octobers with our kids. Images of corn mazes, harvest moons and Halloween costumes rush through me, as if they are memories of a life that I have yet to live. My heart is filled with so much love for this dream that I am all at once joyful with hope and terrified that it may never happen.
There are so many steps and decisions to make before we even begin trying to get pregnant. The biggest one right now: we need to choose an egg donor.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/23863-choosing-egg-donor/
When we were married, it solidified our relationship in the way that all wedding ceremonies do. Anybody who knew us well also knew about our hope to become dads.
Many of our friends and family began to assume the most obvious path for us to start a family was through adoption. As each year passed, and more of our friends continued getting pregnant and having babies, I started to feel my own innate desire to procreate. I began to feel a physical yearning in my gut and chest anytime a baby was nearby. As a man, it felt strange to admit being "baby crazy."
But I was. Totally baby crazy.
Read the rest of this post over on Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/22960-choosing-gestational-surrogacy/
Both of us grew up on the east coast and most of our families are still there, so any time we have the chance to see them, it’s a special occasion. The last time we’d seen both of our families was at our wedding two summers ago. So, it was definitely time to plan a trip back east to visit them.
We decided to go to North Carolina, where Kirk’s grandmother and a couple of his uncles live. Once we let the rest of his family know, the trip turned into a small family reunion.
Well, we took a bit longer of a summer break from blogging than we had intended, but we're back now and will be posting regularly again. We'll still be blogging about our journey towards fatherhood, but also a bit more about our lives in general so that you can learn a bit more about who we are.
We're also excited that we've been invited to share our story with the awesome community over at Mom.me. Our first post went up on Monday and you can check it out here: http://mom.me/blog/22515-our-next-adventure/
Stay tuned for updates on what we did for summer vacation, where we're at in our surrogacy journey, and more!
There was an energy shift and a collective gasp when we revealed our Indiegogo campaign page at our Father’s Day launch party last month. Everyone was super supportive, but there was an essence of doubt in the air. There were several moments throughout the course of our crowdfunding campaign where we each looked at each other and asked “Can we actually do this? Are we really trying to crowdfund $75,000? How did we end up here?”
It has been an interesting month of blogging, researching, emailing, tweeting, and calling upon all of our connections near and far. We have been immersed in our crowdfunding process since our Father's Day launch. We have accomplished so much in this past month.
Posted by Anthony.
Dealing with a clogged drain is never fun. It’s less fun at 6:30 am and that drain is in your shower and you’re standing there, half awake, ankle deep in water. But, this was the situation that I found myself in last Thursday morning. Not an ideal start to the day, but, I reasoned with myself, it could always be worse.
A good friend, Rachel Parker, wrote a letter of support for us and sent it to her family. She shared it with us and agreed to let us share it with our blog readers as well.
Dear Readers,
You may have noticed some Facebook posts about my friends' crowdfunding campaign to raise money to have a baby through surrogacy. Generally, anything involving fundraising and compelling people to part with their hard-earned money is way out of my comfort zone, even though, theoretically, it is a beautiful thing. It's pretty clear that their story must be shared and noticed by more than immediate friends and family in order to reach the amount required by the end of the month.
Since we began publicly sharing our journey towards fatherhood, we have had many people ask us if we have considered adoption. The short answer is, yes, we considered adoption and remain open to it as an option. However, we ultimately needed to make a personal decision for what felt like the best option for us to start our journey.
Posted by Anthony
When I woke up on Friday morning, I mostly expected that it would be just another day.
Posted by Anthony
How much would you pay to have your baby photos? How much would you give to keep the photos that you already have of your children? Baby photos are something that most of us take for granted. Even if it’s just a few, most of us are able to look at baby photos of ourselves and glance back through time to when we had pudgy cheeks, no hair, and didn’t like pureed peas.
Posted by Kirk.
We have received a lot of support about our process of becoming dads. We have also had some difficult conversations with folks who disagree with our approach. We've found ourselves defending and explaining our choice to pursue surrogacy and our decision to be so public about it.
We understand that not everyone is going to resonate with our story. We also recognize that people have strong opinions about family planning and parenting. But let me be clear: we value honesty. We believe in a community with diverse perspectives. We strive for authenticity and compassion. We practice altruism.
Posted by Anthony
I was 16 or 17 when I went to my first pride event. Part of Boston’s pride celebrations include a youth pride march. It was the late 1990s and I was still learning about the political and cultural side of my sexual identity. I didn’t know much except that pride was something that happened every June. I guess I assumed that it was much nicer to have a parade in June than in the middle of a New England winter.
After our first consultation with a surrogacy agency we were super excited and pretty discouraged at the same time. We had some idea that surrogacy would be expensive but we didn't have a clue about the actual costs. We also didn't realize that we would essentially be required to have all of the money up front before moving forward with any part of the process.
We have received a lot of questions about why gestational surrogacy costs so much. While it's difficult to put a price on starting a family, the reality is that there are a lot of people, organizations, and technology involved in creating an embryo through in-vitro fertilization from a donated egg and then transferring that egg to a gestational surrogate whose body has been prepared to become pregnant through medical technology. Add to that the necessary financial, social, and emotional support for our gestational surrogate as she carries our child, and the numbers start to make more sense.
Posted by Kirk
I never really had an official coming out. As a bisexual/queer identified person married to a gay identified man, my sexual identity is often assumed, and I still experience coming out on a regular basis.
Since we've started to share our story more widely, we have been answering a lot of questions from people who are curious about our plans to grow our family and about our choice to pursue gestational surrogacy. Here are answers to some of the questions we've been asked. We will keep this post updated as we continue to have more conversations with people.
Posted by Anthony
I came out when I was 12, so I didn’t spend a lot of time growing up thinking about what it would be like to fall in love with and marry a woman. I always knew that I would fall in love with and marry a man.
Posted by Kirk
Anthony has been sick in bed for the past two weeks. He's been coughing and feverish with lots of tossing and turning at night. It's times like this when I start to panic about the idea of having kids. It's a challenge sometimes- just trying to take care of each other and all the responsibilities of daily life. How in the world do people continue parenting when they get sick or when their co-parent is out of commission because they're sick?
Our wedding was not just about recognizing the love that was growing between us. It was about the joining of family and sharing of vows with our tribe.
We can't predict how these decisions will impact our unborn child(ren). We have know idea what the "best" decision will be. We are imperfect and that's ok....
Posted by Anthony
My first solo foray into cooking wasn’t exactly a success. I was about 7 and I had spent the afternoon with my Nana, helping her to make homemade pasta and other things for dinner. For desert, we made pudding from a mix. It wasn’t an instant mix—it required a few additional items and then it had to be cooked—but it was pretty straightforward. At least, it seemed pretty straightforward with her by my side guiding me. I enjoyed making and eating it so much that she sent me home with another box of mix so that I could make it again.
Posted by Kirk
I first saw the Atlantic Ocean when I was 5. My Dad took me. It was during the same visit that my Uncle and Aunt got married in Marshfield, MA. The only thing I knew about the Ocean at that point was from the book "A Day at the Beach"from The Little Golden Book Collection...
When we started to tell our friends about our plans to have a baby via surrogate we were ambushed with a gazillion questions...
The African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" has never resonated as much as it does today. Only, in our case, the saying is more like "it takes a village to create a child" We need so much support in order to make this happen. I have daily doubts if it is even possible. Can we really do this? As we continue learning about the surrogacy process, we also keep discovering the multitude of people who need to be involved in order to make this a reality for us.
Posted by Anthony.
I grew up in what I always imagined was a pretty typical suburban town outside of Boston. We had a nice house, a backyard, and, later on, a swimming pool. I could walk to Wilmington Plaza, which was a strip-mall anchored by a grocery store and a TJ Maxx. There was also a video rental store, a Radio Shack, and a toy store. It was exciting to get to walk to “the Plaza” because it meant getting a chance to walk through the patch of woods that separated my neighborhood from the back of it. It was a short walk, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but in my imagination those woods offered so much more than a shortcut to buy a carton of milk for my mom.
Posted by Kirk.
We all have an instinct to belong to a family. Some of us are born into one, others join a family by choice, some create family, and some of us have a little bit of each those. I was raised in Uniontown, Pennsylvania at the foot of the Laurel Highlands mountain range. I wasn't born there, but it is where I spent the majority of my childhood. Uniontown, population 12,000(ish), is about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. In the 19th century it was at the center of coal mining production. Even today, it actually has a pretty spectacular skyline for a town of its size. It's a very blue collar kinda place, although both of my parents work in the helping profession. They have been caregivers and helpers all of their lives.