“I’m a gay single dad and spent $125k to have a baby by myself"
Credit: SWNS / Matt Bonnen
A gay single dad spent $125k to have a baby by himself – after not wanting to wait for someone else to "fulfil" his "dream".
Matt Bonnen, 31, had always dreamed of being a dad and when his relationship of four years broke down he didn’t think it would be possible.
But after a cancer scare and losing his brother, Christopher, 31, in a drowning accident, Matt realised life was too short and he didn’t need to have a partner to become a parent.
He started to look into agencies to help with surrogacy and picked out an egg donor who had similar physical features to himself.
After one failed go, Matt found out his surrogate - a 30-year-old woman - was pregnant in February 2023 and he was able to attend to all the scans – in person or on FaceTime.
A gay single dad spent $125k to have a baby by himself – after not wanting to wait for someone else to "fulfil" his "dream".
Matt Bonnen, 31, had always dreamed of being a dad and when his relationship of four years broke down he didn’t think it would be possible.
But after a cancer scare and losing his brother, Christopher, 31, in a drowning accident, Matt realised life was too short and he didn’t need to have a partner to become a parent.
He started to look into agencies to help with surrogacy and picked out an egg donor who had similar physical features to himself.
After one failed go, Matt found out his surrogate - a 30-year-old woman - was pregnant in February 2023 and he was able to attend to all the scans – in person or on FaceTime.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I think that people have this misconception
00:02that adoption is so easy, and it's not.
00:04People wait years and years and years and years.
00:06Dergacy was my best option.
00:08♪♪
00:16Outfit of the day with my son.
00:18We're doing a matching look today.
00:20Let's see.
00:21He's in the UGG boots.
00:23He's chilling right now.
00:24Look at him, how cute he is right now.
00:27He looks like a model.
00:28My name is Matthew Bonin.
00:29I'm from New York.
00:31I'm a gay single dad, and I'm 31 years old.
00:33♪♪
00:38I've always been okay with not being in a relationship,
00:40but I will not be okay with not having a family.
00:42I'm not going to stop what I'm doing
00:44or stop my dreams or stop my whatever I want to do in life
00:47because I'm waiting for somebody to be with me.
00:50It just doesn't make any sense to me
00:51that I have to wait for that special someone
00:53to have a family.
00:54I think that's not fair at all.
00:57I think that people have this misconception
00:58that adoption is so easy, and it's not.
01:00It's not very seamless, it's not very easy.
01:02People wait years and years and years and years.
01:04Surrogacy was my best option at that moment.
01:07Eventually, I would love to adopt.
01:09♪♪
01:14Who do I think is the most attractive?
01:16That's what I thought when I was looking at the catalog.
01:18My number one was my first pick, and no one picked her yet.
01:21And she was ready, like, in one month.
01:23You can either be very hands-on,
01:25and you can be there at every scan.
01:27And then you could be very involved with the surrogate,
01:31or you don't have to be at all.
01:32You can make this a very transactional experience.
01:35I didn't want that,
01:36so I wanted to be involved as much as possible.
01:38So we would FaceTime, like, probably every scan,
01:41and then we would also text almost every single day.
01:44My surrogate was super amazing,
01:47and she allowed me to be in the delivery room.
01:48It definitely was a lot in the beginning.
01:50I was like, what is happening?
01:51Like, she seems like she's in so much pain,
01:53holding her hand throughout the whole thing.
01:55And it took her about, like, 10 minutes
01:57for him to push to come out.
01:59So that's pretty short for pregnancies.
02:01But she hugged me, and she was like,
02:03ah, and she, like, delivered the baby.
02:06She pushed, and she, like, grabbed me in,
02:08and, like, pushed as hard as she could.
02:10And that's when Noah came out.
02:11And I couldn't really necessarily see,
02:13but then I, like, started,
02:14I was gonna start crying,
02:15because it was such a beautiful moment.
02:17I kept saying, like, thank you so much.
02:19And I looked at him, and I was like, oh, he's beautiful.
02:20Like, he's the perfect baby in the world.
02:23Me being a single-parent dad,
02:25their automatic assumption is out,
02:27like, he must miss his party life.
02:28This was a very intentional, thought-out decision.
02:31I did not just think about this on a whim,
02:33and say, I want to, no,
02:35this was thought out for a very, very long time.
02:37And I made my decision,
02:38and it was the best decision I've ever made in my life.
02:41He's part of me.
02:43Your parents tell you this, like, how much they love you,
02:45but you don't believe it.
02:46But once you have your own child,
02:48you're like, oh, I'm so proud of him.
02:49I'm like, I'm so proud of him.
02:51But once you have your own,
02:53you realize how much you love your child.
02:55He's my life.