When Nicky Leonard was still living with his family in Ireland, he told his mum he was gay. She shed a few tears and his heart sank, thinking she might be disappointed. But his mum raced to explain her sadness was that he would probably never be a parent, a role she knew he was meant for.
In New Zealand, Nicky’s future husband David Beard was at an all-boys’ school, planning his life. He was going to be a lawyer and make a lot of money. “I didn’t have any thought of being a gay father-of-three!” he smiles.
But fate and love triumphed. After moving to Aotearoa, legal executive and systems expert Nicky met lawyer David, the pair fell for each other and eventually, once it became legal, they were married. Now the Auckland couple are celebrating another milestone.
The triplings, who were carried by two different mothers, were all born underweight.
David, 45, and Nicky, 33, are now recognised to be the legal parents of nine-month-old “triplings” Lachlan, Blake and Kelly – two boys and a girl conceived via two surrogate mothers in the Mexican town of Villahermosa.
The babies will finally have birth certificates bearing their fathers’ names, as well as Kiwi passports. “No more jokes about the Irishman, the Kiwi and the three Mexicans!” grins Te Kuiti- born David in an exclusive chat with Woman’s Day.
“I can’t stop smiling and then getting teary-eyed thinking of what it means,” adds Nicky. “I love them and David so much, and now we’re recognised as a family. Not that we weren’t a family before, but this is the icing on the cake.”
David – who walked down the aisle to Madonna’s “Material Girl” in January this year – says, “I was fully prepared to lose everything we owned, but we made it, with the help of so many Kiwis we will never know to thank personally.”
He’s referring to the nearly $30,000 worth of donations made on the crowdfunding site Givealittle to help the Beard family when they were stranded for eight weeks in Mexico, being extorted by their dodgy surrogacy agency, which pushed their costs up from $180,000 to $377,000.
Things started going wrong just before eldest son Lachlan was born. The hospital that David and Nicky had paid for was suddenly switched to a back-street clinic full of cockroaches. It was a brutal birth for the surrogate mother – and their newborn boy had to be put in an incubator.
David hit the roof and demanded a transfer to their promised hospital, but Lachlan would only be released if thousands of dollars were paid. Soon afterwards, Kelly and Blake were born in the hospital, as arranged, but the surrogacy agency’s lawyer slowed down the paperwork, meaning costs spiralled out of control. The five Beard family members had to spend two months sharing a one-bedroom place, stuffed to the brim with baby supplies.
Adding to the drama, all three of their babies had low birthweights. Lachlan and Blake were 2.7kg, while Kelly was 2.4kg. Nicky hardly slept for the first couple of weeks, feeding the newborns by syringe every hour.
Blake, Kelly and Lachlan.
Then it was discovered that the agency, which is now being investigated, hadn’t been giving the surrogate mothers their pre-paid monthly allowances. David and Nicky had to fork out this money all over again.
And to add insult to injury, the couple’s house in Titirangi, West Auckland, couldn’t be sold to raise funds as it was in dispute with the vendors. All of this led to a family friend setting up the Givealittle page, the proceeds of which enabled the family to come home.
“I just want to say thank you to everyone,” says David, looking to Nicky for support. “Mexico was a scary time for us. We were told to go as soon as we could. The authorities couldn’t guarantee our safety. The inference was that the agency was connected with organised crime. Now we both just want to turn off everything that happened in Mexico and look forward.”
The dads dream of the day they’ll send their kids to school, and Nicky tells us how he has been ready for these little blessings for years. His qualifications? Four sisters, one brother, 10 nieces and nephews, and countless hours of babysitting his baby cousins and goddaughter. “There are 10 sets of twins in my family, so I’m used to it,” he smiles. “I just fell into fatherhood like it was second nature. I love it.”
Nicky also studied home economics for three years, with his final year’s project about the biology and care of a child from conception to four years old, so it’s no surprise he’s acting as stay-at-home “Da” to the babies (David is known as “Dad”).
“Mind you, everything you learn is just a way to do something,” he insists. “There is no one way to raise a child. You have to learn who the kids are first – their personalities and how they like stuff.” Grinning at the babies, he adds, “I think we all know each other now.”
Meanwhile, David is the breadwinner, working 18 hours a day to pay off surrogacy-related loans and putting in the hard yards on major trials before the courts close at Christmas. But more and more, he is working from home, often juggling legal work and baby care if Nicky needs to nip out.
David laughs, “Suddenly I’m on a teleconference with a judge, with a gurgling or crying baby bouncing on one knee. But clients, the courts and everyone else have been really supportive. A High Court judge said the other day, ‘Congratulations! I hear you are very busy, Mr Beard.’”
Super-dads! While David is the breadwinner, Nicky(right) is a stay-at-home father.
Nicky also doubles up when necessary, doing research for David while caring for the babies. He also does the IT for David’s office and has taken the three children to courthouses to file documents.
“Nick is doing such a huge job,” says David, full of awe when he talks of Nicky going to the supermarket solo, pushing the buggy with one hand, holding a basket with the other and carrying a backpack too.
When they see Nicky in action, the check-out operators usually say, “Gosh, your wife is so lucky,” but he corrects them that it’s his husband who has the good fortune and polite chit-chat usually continues.
“I love it!” is Nicky’s response to every aspect of parenthood – even the broken sleep. If the babies wake more than once in the night, he simply beds down opposite their row of cots.
“Probably one of the nicest parts of the day is when their three heads roll over and they’re looking at me, just smiling,” he says. “It’s very cute. And they’ve never been apart. They chat to each other. It’s very funny.”
Nicky and David believe that if they’re happy, the babies are happy. Any stress gets taken outside. “We each brought different things to the table,” says David. “Nicky lives in the now with the babies. He can have them cleaned up and in the car in 20 minutes. It takes me longer to get myself ready!”
It’s David’s job to worry about the future. “I have all this responsibility,” he confesses. “It’s hit me like a brick wall, thinking, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve got to have a plan, then a plan B, C and D, so you can steer the ship where you want to go.”
But as Nicky reminds him, for now, the kids are healthy and the family is all together in NZ, so there’s nothing that can’t be solved with a bit of teamwork.
