Have a Holly Jolly Christmas: Meet Adam, Doug and Jeremy Taylor
Despite a bout of Covid, Doug, Jeremy and Adam Taylor are excited for Christmas this year
Adam and Doug Taylor had big plans for Christmas this year. The Holly, Michigan-based couple were hoping to start a new tradition with their 18-month-old son, Jeremy, by taking him to Chicago to the Christkindlmarket. “I grew up in Germany as a military brat,” Adam said. “Mom would take us to the German Christmas markets between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I still have decorations from those trips that I have up all over the house.” They also planned to visit the Lincoln Park Zoo lights at dusk and to see Santa at Macy’s. Unfortunately, Adam got Covid so they had to cancel plans but they hope to still head to the Holly Dickens Festival before Christmas. “We went all out on gifts for Jeremy this year,” said Adam, “even mailing a letter to Santa.”
It was on their second date that Adam Taylor told his future husband Doug that he wanted kids. “I put my cards on the table,” Adam said with a laugh as their 18-month-old son Jeremy squiggled in his arms. The couple married in 2017 and built their house in Holly in the hopes that one of the bedrooms would someday be converted into a nursery. But how to grow that family was going to be a struggle, no matter which route the couple decided to take. Adoption in Michigan for gay couples can be a tough road and Adam, who before moving into manufacturing had been a civil rights lobbyist, had been in enough committee meetings on adoption to understand those particular struggles. Surrogacy was the only other option.
But, of course, surrogacy in Michigan is also a tough pathway to parenthood because of the 1988 Surrogate Parenting Act that makes compensated surrogacy illegal. So finding an altruistic surrogate was going to be a tough journey. A jovial outgoing man, Adam shared much of the couple’s journey to parenthood on social media. One of those struggles had been trying for over a year to get viable embryos through an anonymous egg donor at a Michigan fertility clinic. Finding a surrogate was another hurdle and one Father’s Day Adam got depressed with all the posts he kept seeing on Facebook, as it reminded him that they were seemingly getting nowhere. One of Doug’s friends, Becky Fritz, who he had known since elementary school in Fenton, quickly replied to Adam’s post writing, “Let's have breakfast” and writing that she wanted to be their surrogate. “She's always been an amazing and just beautiful person,” said Doug, adding that she already had one child with her husband. “She just wanted to help create another family.”
Adam, Doug and Becky then got down to brass tacks, sorting out everything from the legal steps to insurance coverage and also doctor’s appointments. Once pregnant, even the barrier of Covid did not stop Adam from going to those checkups. “I saw her during all the appointments,” he said, adding that she lived only 20 minutes away. “I was a stormtrooper during Covid. They would say, ‘you guys can’t come in’ and I would say, ‘try and stop me.’”
While all three were over the moon about the pregnancy they still needed to tackle all the legal hurdles. Adam was the biological father (the couple plan to do surrogacy again using Doug’s embryos) so he would automatically be listed on the birth certificate. But that meant that unless they could get a pre-birth order from a judge—something that Adam and Doug understood had never been granted to gay parents before in the state of Michigan with a surrogate pregnancy—Doug would have to do a second parent adoption once the baby was born. “That could take two years in normal court proceedings but those are delayed even more now because of Covid,” said Adam. “So Doug would not legally be able to drop him off daycare without notes for me or take him to a medical appointment. If something happened to me, if I died, technically, the state would come in and assume custody of Jeremy.”
But luckily with the help of an attorney, the couple were able to traverse through all the seemingly endless paperwork and legal disclosures. A judge did grant them a court order, meaning that both men would be listed on their son’s birth certificate. “That court order was the only reason why we got to be allowed in for appointments,” said Adam, “And then court order was the only reason why we got to be present at the birth and that court order was the only reason why we were there to sign our names on the document.” However, even despite of the legal ruling, it took the county clerk’s office several times over 16 weeks before everything was correctly in order. “That was either because someone was incompetent or it was done intentionally,” Adam said, adding that they kept making mistakes when it came to listing “parent/parent” versus “mother/father.”
Through surrogacy, the couple would like to have a brother or sister for Jeremy but Becky likely won’t be their surrogate again, in part because she is currently expecting her second child. If they go out of state, they worry about missing many of the aspects of the pregnancy they got to share in person. This has led them to become active not only in being mentors for other same sex couples going through surrogacy but also working to change Michigan’s surrogacy law, which included them participating in Michigan Infertility Advocacy Day in September. Adam also brought the subject up with Governor Gretchen Whitmer when he walked next to her during the Motor City Pride Parade. “I said, ‘We are having advocacy day in two days,’” said Adam, adding that she was interested in hearing their story. So watch this space.