Thirty-nine-year-old Kerry Stevens of Devon, England, wanted to help her friends Abel Lantos, also 39, and his partner, 31-year-old Ondrej "Andy" Simecko, have a baby. Stevens already has three teenagers of her own, but knowing how much the couple wanted to start their family she asked them if she could be their surrogate — to which they readily agreed. Lantos is speaking with CafeMom about their incredible journey and is sharing why the bond he formed with Stevens during the time she grew their twins has made her "family" to him and his partner.
Lantos and Simecko have been together since 2011, but after years of building their lives together, they knew they wanted to take the next step.
"I always wanted to have a family as I come from a very family centric background," says Lantos, who lives in Torquay, Devon.
He and Simecko took things slow — first they moved in together, then got a car together, then a house, and finally a pug they call Apple.
"We always planned our life like that, as we were building it up step by step," he explains.
By 2017 the couple was ready for kids -- a new step that would pose as a unique challenge.
"We looked into all avenues of creating our family, and surrogacy was one of the possibilities," Lantos explains. They considered all types of options but ideally wanted a biological child if possible.
"At the end of 2017, on a Sunday, I sat down to look into the subject then actually set up a plan to how and where we could pursue this," he says. He'd heard there were options available in India and Thailand, but Lantos explained that as he did his research he was frustrated to see that both countries recently passed legislation that would make it hard for them to have a surrogate as both foreigners and a gay couple.
He was even more reluctant to pursue surrogacy in his native UK, as the surrogacy laws do not protect the rights of the "intended parents."
"For example, the signed agreement does not hold any legal binding force. The surrogate's husband could derail the whole process at any point," he says. That meant they would need to appeal to the court to get a decree to make their agreement legal.
Lantos felt like he hit a very real wall.
"I was very distressed by the whole situation," he recalls. Lantos told Simecko the disappointing results of his research.
The next day, Simecko went into the care company he works for and vented to some colleagues about some of the troubles he and Lantos were having.
It was there that Stevens, the deputy manager at Simecko's facility, first heard his troubles and she asked him if he was serious about having a child — she had an idea of how she could help.
"They were friends and enjoyed a very good work relationship," Lantos says. "They relied on each other greatly in their daily tasks as well as also went out together with other colleagues multiple times."
Lantos and Simecko invited Stevens and her husband, Gary, to their house that weekend and discussed the idea of of Stevens becoming their surrogate.
"We discussed this matter to the fullest," Lantos recalled. "Kerry and Gary wanted to see if we really have thought this matter through, and that we are prepared to accept the paths this journey might take us and not just bail on them if there are difficulties in the pregnancy."
Lantos also had reservation of his own.
"From my side, I wanted to understand why Kerry offered to help us," he explains. "I soon understood that Kerry and Gary wanted to help us due to who they are: generous people with solid, down-to-earth personalities and morals, who not just endured their struggles together but were constantly forged and molded by them to become something stronger. All the while not never losing their kindness and humor."
It was enough to convince him that Stevens was a perfect fit.
"Once the dinner was over, we were ready to take the journey," he says.
After speaking with their kids and their family, Stevens had only one request before they moved forward.
She wanted them to use a donor egg "as she thought that would help her greatly to reduce the issue of attachment to the baby once the baby was born," he says.
The next year was spent researching how both logistically and legally they would be able to able to achieve their goal. They found an egg donor — Simecko's cousin 31-year-old Katarina — and in 2018, together made the decision to pursue their implantation at the Centre for Reproduction & Gynaecology Wales.
In the fall of 2018, Katarina started treatment for egg collection.
"On November 2, 2018 from 15 follicles seven eggs were successfully collected," Lantos says. Using a sperm sample from Lantos, they were ultimately able to create three embryos, which were frozen November 7 until they would be implanted into Stevens.
"Due to the flexibility of my work and my workplace, I was the driver who drove the girls, with the expectation of Kerry's last journey, to all their appointments,"Lantos recalls. "[A] good 130 miles from us. I was really thrilled that with each passing mile I might be getting closer and closer to our goal."
On November 14, they implanted the embryos into Stevens, and six days later, while Lantos and Simecko were visiting New York, she sent them a picture of a positive pregnancy test at 2 a.m.
"I remember looking out of our hotel room, onto the city vista, mulling over in me the implications, and waiting for the day to break to tell Andy the exciting news," he recalls.
Less than a month later, the couple received some more exciting news when they went in for Stevens' first scan.
Back in the UK, a scan revealed that Stevens was having twins.
"First, I was rocked that what this meant for us, but then was supper excited that we are going to have not just one but two babies," he says.
Simecko thought that Lantos and Stevens were joking when they told him on the phone that they were going to have twins, but he also realized this was their "new reality" and went with it.
The rest of their pregnancy was handled by doctors with the National Health Service, who performed excellent care to the trio, even though their local facility had never dealt with surrogacy before.
"Due to the nature of the pregnancy (monochorionic twins [or twins that share a placenta, according to the University of California, San Francisco]) we had a scan every two weeks, but we were very lucky as there were no issues throughout the pregnancy," Lantos says.
"I was very exciting to see how the babies developed and what they were up to," he continued. "How much they have grown, who was awake, and who was in what position."
"There was a small size difference between the two babies throughout the pregnancy, but it was not classified as severe twin-to-twin transfusion," he added. That situation occurs where there is an imbalance in transfusion of blood favoring one twin over the other, UC, San Francisco noted.
"On my birthday in February, in a routine scan we were informed that we would be having two boys," Lantos tells CafeMom.
On July 19, 2019, Stevens was taken in for a scheduled C-section.
The group was admitted at midnight, but hours later, about 2 p.m. the next day, Stevens bolted upright in her hospital bed and started to cry.
"Throughout the whole journey I never saw her crying," Lantos says. "She said that she was in terrible pain and asked me to get the doctors, which I immediately did."
At first they thought that Stevens was in labor, but she told them that after having three kids of her own she could tell that this pain was different.
They took Stevens to an operating room and gave her an epidural, which made her blood pressure fall and it seemed like she was going to lose consciousness.
"When we entered the room the staff was already on standby," Lantos recalls. "It was like a military operation. Everybody had their duty and carried it out to the fullest in total calm and professionalism."
They gave Stevens an IV to raise her blood pressure back up.
Things weren't looking good.
"I felt awful as I thought that we might not just lose the boys but also Kerry, a wife, and mother of three. It was a dreadful experience," he continues.
"There was a massive white board on the wall in the back of the room with a check list on it," he says. "There was senior medical staff standing beside it with a marker pen in her hand. That's when I noticed that it had all of Kerry's details on it.
"When she started to call out the details of the list, the whole room stopped," he recalls. "They were like a machine checking if all parts were ready to go. At the end, she called out 'Are we ready?' The whole room answered in unison: 'We are ready to proceed.'
"I was holding Kerry's hand. Andy was stroking her hair. She was barely conscious for a while. One of the medical staff asked for my phone to take pictures," he remembers.
Once the partition was up, Stevens finally regained consciousness.
"Kerry then turned to me, smiling, and said: 'Boys, I think they are cutting me now,'" he recalls. "One of the surgeons looks over the [divider] and adds: 'Oh, don't worry lady. We are long inside you.'"
"'Oh, OK then. Then carry on,' she said with a smile," Lantos recalls.
An hour after Stevens first felt that sharp pain, Arthur and William were delivered.
Arthur was healthy at birth, but William had low blood sugar. Doctors fed the boys colostrum they'd taken from Stevens, and by later that night his blood sugar levels rebounded.
"We were allowed to leave the hospital next day after noon, but not first before we went over to see how Kerry was doing and to show her the boys," he says.
"That's when she told us that the problem was caused because her placenta split apart and that she had internal bleeding. She was informed that if we would not have been in the hospital at that point there was a very high chance that we would have lost the boys and Kerry as well."
Stevens tells CafeMom that in total it took her 12 to 14 weeks to recover from her surgery "because of ongoing infections in the C-section scar [and] because of two stitches that hadn't fully dissolved." But now she's back to normal.
The boys, now almost a year old, are the apple of Lantos and Simecko's eyes.
"There are no more sad days in our life. If we feel tired, we just need to go into their room and we're reenergized and are ready to take on the whole world again," he says.
"We are very lucky as they are very good boys," Lantos continues. "Full of smiles and lacking any drama. They are very chilled and socialize very well."
Arthur is more chill, the dad says, and likes to "analyze toys," whereas William "loves to explore and move around."
"For example both can pull themselves up now and stand, but Arthur will only do this if there is some gain in it, compared to William who will do this just for the fun of it," he explains.
And their surrogate mom is closer to the couple than ever.
"Andy and Kerry had a very good friendship prior to the whole project," Lantos says. "I really got to know Kerry through our journey. I really love her and can't praise her enough for all what she has done for us and thank Gary for his support. They are family now, whatever may come."
As for Stevens, she tells CafeMom that she has "absolutely no regrets whatsoever."
Lantos says that he, Simecko, and Stevens wanted to share their story because "it's a much-needed story in our troubled times."
"It is a story of kindness and trust and love," he explains. "[It] all started with an honest conversation and was followed by an amazing journey with its emotional roller coasters and now we have two boys and an amazing experience in which we can all take pride. You can sign all the paperwork in a situation like this, but in the end it all boils down the trust, kindness, and strength of character.
"My motto throughout the journey was 'You actually never know where the road you started on will eventually take you, but you can rest in the knowledge that it is you who will chose each step what you take on it,''' he says.
