Being a dad makes him a happy whistler
WHEN internationally acclaimed rugby referee Jonathan Kaplan hung up his boots five years ago, he picked up a pair of infant booties and bibs to tackle fatherhood – alone.
Kaplan, who officiated 70 Test matches in his 17-yearlong rugby career before deciding to call it quits five years ago, has documented his journey to parenthood through surrogacy in his book, Winging it, written by Joanne Jowell.
He said the main reasoning behind it was to highlight that there were options available for people who wanted children and could not have them through conventional means.
The 51-year-old said he had encountered a lot of wellwishes and curious questions during his journey to becoming Kaleb’s dad.
“I had gotten a lot of messages of goodwill, but mostly there was a general sense of awe of how I went about it.
“People kept saying this was so rare and I was so brave, but the point of the book was to show that it need not be like that,” Kaplan said.
“I knew that I wanted a family when I was a teenager.
“Despite my own fractured childhood, I always liked the idea of family and children.
“It would have been a great pity if a skill that I think I am quite good at, which is being a dad, wouldn’t be able to be used in this life on my own children.
“I was 47 and was ageing when I made the decision and first stop was finding not so much a surrogate, but a donor egg.
“There are a lot of agencies and I approached one and from then on it went into a discussion into what I needed to make this happen, then it went on to finding a surrogate.
“As it turned out, this particular surrogate became available at the time when I started looking and I grabbed her because she knew what she wanted, why she wanted to do it – her heart and mind were in the right place,” said Kaplan.
“This is a very challenging route for not only the intended parent, but for the surrogate as well, and you need a strong person who understands their domain and knows what will happen during the pregnancy and after that.
“She had a very supportive husband and they appeared very happy, and it helped me that they were happy.”
Kaplan said his desire to have children would have driven him to fulfil it however possible, but said that it had been important to him that he use his own sperm.
“Adoption was something I did not discount, but I saw it as a last resort. My priority, selfishly was using my own sperm.
“There are a lot of unwanted children who need love and a home and I would have gone there, but this was an option and I took it,” he said.
“In the beginning I had numerous failures and my challenge was to pick myself up every time there was a failure.
“I had to adjust my expectations – and not just financially, although the financial implication for failure is extreme – but it is the emotional expectation of a baby and then nothing, and then you realise that not only do I not have a baby but I have to spend again to get
it.
“I believe that a soul is sometimes not ready at the time that you want it, and when it was ready it came through.
“But this particular soul, we are already so connected despite the fact that he does not have a mommy – although my girlfriend fulfils that particular role. “I went into this a solo dad, but I have a girlfriend now who has kids of her own, so it is helpful to his growth because he now has a female presence.” Kaplan said that even with the challenges he faced in the two years it took before Kaleb was born, followed by a low-grade depression shortly after the birth because he could not bond with his new born baby, he would readily do it again to provide his son with siblings.
“I would do this again, the rewards of the interaction that takes place between father and son cannot be measured in money,” Kaplan said.
“And on the question of why did I wait, the simple answer is I was busy,” he said.
“For two decades I flew on average 100 flights a year and in my worst periods I was away from home for 216 days, which makes it quite difficult to have meaningful relationships.
“I would have been an absent parent and I don’t think that is not fair on the child. What was the point of having a child if you could not be there to raise him or her. Parenthood is a beautiful thing.”