DADDIES’ GIRL
Our fight to keep Baby Carmen
It was supposed to be a three-week visit to witness the birth of their daughter. Instead, American Gordon Lake and his Spanish husband Manuel Valero have been trapped in Thailand for the past 14 months, locked in a desperate battle for custody of their child. Baby Carmen was born to a Thai surrogate mother in January last year. Even though she was born from Mr Lake’s sperm and a third-party egg donor, Thai law grants custody of a child to its birth mother regardless of any biological ties. Carmen’s birth mother, Patidta Kusolsang, has reneged on her promise to sign over custody. Mr Lake and Mr Valero have been in court over the past two weeks fighting for the right to take their daughter home to Spain, providing the first major test of new legislation governing the surrogacy industry which was passed last year. A verdict is due later this month. In the meantime, the couple’s professional and family lives have been shattered. Their young son, Alvaro, who was born to a surrogate mother in India, has been forced to spend much of the past year living with Mr Valero’s sister in Spain. Fearful of Carmen being snatched away by Ms Patidta, Mr Lake and Mr Valero have been also wary of contact with the outside world, remaining mostly confined to their Bangkok condo. Here, in their own words, the couple describe their ordeal over the past 14 months, their struggle with the decision to separate their young family, and how they manage to get through each day in a foreign country with a future still far from certain.
Carmen wakes with t he city, making her first sounds around 6am. About a half-hour later she stands up in her crib and starts shouting, “Mun, mun!” a Thai word she must have picked up from her surroundings. We open our eyes to find her looking at us with her big beautiful smile. “Mun, mun!” she shouts again. And that’s how we start our day.
Breakfast, games, children’s songs to learn gestures and sound, maybe a walk to the park and a short nap at around 10am. We know that she will sleep for about an hour so we open our computers to get a little work done. We always have a thousand things to do, personal things, work things or things for the campaign to help bring Carmen home, especially feeding her social media so the fans can have their daily ration of the princess. If we don’t, Carmen’s supporters start to worry that she isn’t feeling well, or that something is wrong.
Papa [Mr Valero] writes posts in Spanish, Daddy [Mr Lake] translates them into English and our two amazing Thai admins (who live in Europe) translate everything so all of Thailand can understand. And we have a group chat where we discuss with our admins everything we publish. We imagine it is a bit like editing a newspaper — brainstorming, debates, reading the hundreds of inbox messages, checking the evidence against the surrogate and her legal adviser that people send us, deciding what we can publish, what we can’t. (And sometimes laughing at how absurd the situation may be). This chat group is active almost 24 hours a day and we have become a little online family (although we finally had the opportunity to meet each of them and their real families last month).
We also have an incredibly large team of volunteer translators that help us translate everything — from evidence, to documents, to news articles, from Thai to English so Papa and Daddy can understand what is being said about us. We have every single TV appearance translated and saved so when this is all over we can make a documentary about our story.
We have experienced so many emotions — pure love with the birth of our daughter, then devastation at her surrogate mother’s declaration to want to keep her, confusion, fear, hope, disappointment, deception, frustration, and a few months later, surprise and gratitude with the amazing support of the Thai people.
The princess wakes up from her morning nap and we take a trip to Tesco; maybe we need some eggs or bread, but it’s really just an excuse to go out and not be stuck inside all day. Instead of buying once a week, we buy a little each day.
At 1pm Bangkok time, Spain starts to wake up and we start getting photos and videos from Alvaro: getting ready for school, playing with his toys, etc. This is the only way to overcome the sadness of not being with him.
Alvaro loves buses, so every time we see one on the street, we shoot a video with the phone and send it to him. “Look! Look! A bus!” he says. And then, “Look how big!” or, “It’s pink!” or something like that.
After we found out about an attempt to kidnap Carmen last June, we made the very difficult decision to take Alvaro back to Spain, but we thought it was best for his safety. With the surrogate and her legal adviser going to the press,
Sometimes we cry, thinking about how unfair this whole situation is, and not knowing when we will be able to be home again with our whole family together
calling us human traffickers and crying on TV, showing photos of us, we wondered if someone on the street might approach us or insult us, or maybe even attack us. So in addition to taking Alvaro home, we didn’t take Carmen out of the house too much either. We were really terrified that the Thai people would see us as the bad guys of the story.
It hasn’t worked out that way though. When we take Carmen for a walk following her afternoon nap, supporters will come up to take photos. She acts like a complete celebrity and always smiles in the fans’ selfies. At first it was very scary that people would recognise us on the street. After a while it became more empowering; it made us feel happy and less lonely from being away from our family in Spain.
During that afternoon nap before her walk, Daddy and Papa take advantage to work again. Then Carmen likes to go to the mall and practise walking, walking, walking, and have an afternoon snack — she loves cheesy bread from the bakery there.
Carmen already eats everything and Papa cooks almost all of her meals with fresh foods from the market every day. And she is such a good eater; she devours almost every meal! Two of her favourite purees are chicken and broccoli, and salmon, zucchini, and Parmesan.
Back home at around 6.30pm and Carmen usually has her dinner. Half an hour later Carmen goes to bed, usually exhausted from walking, and she goes to sleep all by herself. Then we have a few hours to take advantage of — to update Carmen’s social media, to do a little more work, to maybe watch a TV show or a movie before bed.
And on some days we are just exhausted, having run out of smiles for Carmen, from meetings or appointments, or of just taking care of Carmen. And we are weak. And sometimes we cry, thinking about how unfair this whole situation is, and not knowing when we will be able to be home again with our whole family together. About how a beautiful trip to welcome Carmen to the world, to our family, could turn into such a nightmare. About missing Alvaro. About the stress of having living expenses in two countries, and being behind in paying our legal expenses. (We have two teams of lawyers, one to fight for custody and another for the criminal defamation case.) About having to lose our modesty and ask for handouts for the first time in our lives. This is very hard.
Carmen actually sleeps nearly 12 hours every night plus the two naps during the day (yes, we know we are lucky). She almost never cries, and she laughs and plays with us, with friends that we meet up with, or alone. She is growing and is developing exactly like she should be. We know we are probably biased, but she really seems to be the perfect little girl.
Carmen has a whole world waiting for her in Spain — a huge family (with three new baby cousins about her age), a home, a brother that adores her — and a future full of dreams and happiness. It’s time to let her go.