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.
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.
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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.