Birth Stories
The Dürt Family
Once Matthew and Elliot admitted to one other that they wanted a baby, they pushed full steam ahead to make that dream a reality. Still, they never could have imagined how it all would come together—from Elliot's sister donating her eggs, to Matthew's 61-year-old mother carrying and delivering her own grandchild, it was truly a family affair. Here is their story—the first in a series celebrating the miracle of birth—as told to Le Scoop by Elliot Dürt.
- Photography
- Ariel Panowicz
I met Matt in the summer of 2012 in Omaha, where we’re both from. He was working on a film and needed a hair stylist. I had seen him on Facebook, of all places, and randomly added him. We got in touch that summer to collaborate. We met at a local French café to have a glass of wine and talk about what we envisioned. After that day, we became inseparable. I moved in three months later. We lived together that year and decided to quit our jobs the following summer and travel full-time, back-packing around Europe. We had always planned to be artists and live free, somewhere else, but after six months we realized that we really missed our families and we missed home. So we decided to come back and that’s when we started getting busy living our life. We didn’t really think much about where we were headed until the winter of 2016 when my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. It really put things into perspective. At that same time, my sister found out that she was pregnant with her first child. So as we moved through my mom’s cancer and I became an uncle, Matthew and I both really explored what is life and what do we want to do with this time together? What does this all mean for us?
Becoming an uncle definitely made me realize that being a parent was something I wanted. I think, as queer people, it can be really challenging to admit that you want to be a parent because you know that it is not going to be an easy journey. Especially living in the Mid-West, which is very conservative. Adoption had just become legal for same-sex couples and, when we got married, Matt had been fired from his job as a teacher, so we were hesitant to even admit to ourselves that it was something we wanted. We knew that we would potentially have to navigate a really oppressive system in order to become parents. So it did take us a while in our relationship to even admit to each other that it was something we wanted but, once we did, it felt like we were full speed ahead and really persistent about finding a way to become parents together.
We view adoption as a noble journey, but we knew right off the bat that it wasn’t something we wanted to pursue simply because we thought that if we could do IVF or surrogacy then we could take things into our own hands and no one would be able to tell us no. Still, we weren’t really sure how that was going to look because I’m a hairstylist and Matt’s a teacher—it’s an expensive journey, even as a heteronormative couple, and we’re just two men, so we knew we were going to be relying on a lot of people to help us.
"I think, as queer people, it can be really challenging to admit that you want to be a parent because you know that it is not going to be an easy journey."
The first thing we did was book an appointment with the IVF clinic that’s in our city and our doctor is really renowned—people travel to Omaha to see him—so it took a couple of months to even get an appointment. In that time we just started exploring what our options would be. We were online looking at egg donor websites and it was just really hard. How do you even begin to choose what kind of eggs you are going to purchase? Do you just pick at random? Do you pick someone who looks like one of you? We had a really challenging time with that.
One day we had my family over for brunch and I was telling all of this to my sister who was pregnant at the time and she said, “Well, I would love to do anything you need me to do to help me start your family.” We were excited but not really sure what that would look like yet. Her husband had a little discomfort around the idea of her being both the egg donor and carrying the baby and she was also in the middle of building her own family so we didn’t want to do anything that would potentially compromise her from having any other children for our sake. We decided that she would be our egg donor but we still needed to figure out who would be our surrogate.
"We genuinely thought that was so sweet and quaint for her to offer— she was post-menopausal and 59 at the time."
We had a friend who offered and she came to our first IVF appointment. We were honored, but she had never had a child and she had some health issues that her doctor was concerned about. Almost immediately she said that we should explore other options for a surrogate. Matt’s mom, Cele, had joked several times, “Well, you know I loved being pregnant and if you need someone to carry the baby, I would love to do that.” We genuinely thought that was so sweet and quaint for her to offer— she was post-menopausal and 59 at the time. But when we joked about it to our doctor who is really funny and has a dry sense of humor, he didn’t laugh at all. He immediately started asking questions about Matt’s mom: Does she still have a uterus? Is she healthy? Is she on any medications? After that conversation, Matt’s mom and dad talked and she was willing to go through the tests to see if she was a viable candidate for us.
She passed all the tests with flying colors. It’s the egg quality that decreases over time. It’s not necessarily that the woman’s body becomes more high-risk. So the fact that her uterus was healthy, that she was healthy, meant there was no reason that she wouldn’t be a viable option. And for us, it was not only a financially smart decision, but it was also really exciting because it allowed us to be so intimately involved in the pregnancy journey, which was something we really wanted to be part of. Plus, it excited us that it was going to be my sister and Matt’s mom; it was truly a family affair.
Everything went smoothly up until the very end. It feels really exciting to share the story now but throughout the pregnancy, it all felt very vulnerable. My mother had passed away, so Cele was our only living mother and she was carrying our first child. We all decided to keep the story close and not necessarily share it with the world until the baby was safely here. A few weeks before the baby was due, we had a photographer take photos of all of us. It felt so vulnerable at the time but I am so happy we took them now.
At 37 weeks, Cele’s blood pressure started to slightly spike and that happened enough that her doctor thought it was time to induce labor, or have “a birthday party,” as he called it. Cele came to our house and we had a moment together before we all drove to the hospital that afternoon. Of course I thought of my own mother. There’s been several times since my mom passed that it can feel really unfair that she isn’t here but definitely with all of the nervousness and the intensity as we approached the baby’s arrival, I felt so much like a little boy that just so badly wanted his mother at his side.
The next morning, at 6:06am, Cele gave birth to our daughter, Uma.
I know it’s such a cliché to say, but being able to witness birth, it’s such an incredible act. It’s so spiritual in a way and just seeing Matt’s mom who is so playful and silly tap into this warrior spirit and just release that power of women that we already recognized as the women of our life came together to help us, but to be in that room moving through that journey with her and just being able to bear witness to it was such a powerful thing. To be there when our daughter was born and to hear her cry out for the first time, and then to hear Matt’s mom cry out, Uma’s grandma cry out, in that final push. It was just unbelievable.
Up until that moment, it was all in theory, and we were moving through this really intimidating, vulnerable journey, like all pregnancies are. So seeing Uma, it was almost like, this is what this was all leading up to. It was you this whole time. And just seeing her as a living, breathing thing and to feel her when we did skin to skin, nothing else mattered. I think especially as fathers you have this worry like, Will I be able to show up fully and feel that connection in the same way that a mother does? And I don’t know if it’s the same as a mother does, but I do know that as soon as I met her, I was ready to show up for her so fully in any way that I could.
Uma will celebrate her second birthday in March. You can learn more about The Durt Family and follow their journey on Instagram.