Gay dads welcomed two babies just weeks apart after thinking surrogacy wouldn’t work
Terrell and Jarius Joseph with three-year-olds Aria and Asthon.(terrell.and.jarius/ Instagram)
A gay couple in Atlanta, Georgia, welcomed two babies just five weeks apart after struggling to conceive through surrogacy.
Terrell and Jarius Joseph, both 27, were excited to become fathers and began planning to have children in their early 20s.
They decided to document their journey online, they told Good Morning America, as they realised there were few Black LGBT+ families sharing their path to becoming parents.
Terrell said: “We didn’t see any people of color that were in a same-sex marriage relationship that we can follow along on a journey that were having kids, so that we can kind of see, ‘OK, are we doing this right?’
“So we just decided to kind of fill the void, and be the testers and share our journey.”
But neither of them were prepared for how unusual that journey would be.
When they were both 22, they privately hired a surrogate who became pregnant straight away but tragically miscarried at 20 weeks.
“One thing we do is try to always be super transparent,” said Jarius. “It was a rough time for us to be able to try to handle that.”
After her miscarriage their surrogate, who they described as “everything we could have ever dreamt of in a surrogate”, struggled to become pregnant again.
They committed to trying one last time, and at the same time began working with another surrogate to help them have a child.
The Josephs’ new surrogate got pregnant on the first attempt, and the couple were ecstatic. But, just a few weeks later, their original surrogate got in touch to say that she was also pregnant.
While Jarius was “terrified” at first, Terrell was “over the moon” as he had always wanted twins. Their two babies, Ashton and Aria, were both born premature just five weeks apart.
Terrell and Jarius soon quit their jobs to become content creators full-time. They currently have an audience of 1.5 million across their social platforms, and are able to spend more time with Ashton and Aria, who are now three years old.
Online, the gay couple on a mission to smash stereotypes about queer parenting, surrogacy and Black fatherhood.
Jarius said: “I feel like there are so many people in our community who still to this day don’t see the life that they would like to have being actually a possibility.
“Don’t think that just because you’re part of the LGBT+ community that you can’t have certain things in life or that success won’t come your way.”
Terrell added: “With fatherhood in general and Black fatherhood, I know that historically, [the stereotype is dads] aren’t involved.
“We can be active in our kids’ lives and give them everything that they dream of, or at least try to.
“Being same-sex parents… we’re not raising our kids to be in a sexual identity or to think a specific type of way other than being open-minded.”
“Breaking all of those stereotypes… bit by bit, I think, has always been our goal,” he added.
