And Then There Were Three: The Exceptional Story of a Remarkable Surrogacy Family

by Esther Rantzen (Foreword), Ian Mucklejohn (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.35

  Frank and insightful, And Then There Were Three tells the extraordinary story of Ian Mucklejohn and his unusual family in his own words. A long-term carer for his disabled father and mother, and the founder of a successful language school, Ian's life was full. But feeling that he was not satisfied, he contacted a surrogacy agency in the US. Ian recounts the struggle of the surrogacy procedure, the suspense of waiting, and the surprise of discovering he was to be the father of triplet boys. But the triplets' premature delivery by Caesarean section in a US hospital was only the beginning of his change of life. Struggling with inscrutable Home Office procedures while trying to establish the boys in the UK, Ian found himself with an even greater problem: the media. Once his story was made public the reactions poured in. He describes the astonishing attention generated by every detail of the triplets' first months - reporters pay a taxi driver 500 pounds to reveal the location of the triplets' Christening, while all the presents from 200 well-wishers on the boys' first Christmas take three days to open. Mediating between nannies and letters from the Home Office, Ian tries to get on with the business of raising a family. Against the media backdrop he gives a glimpse of single-parent life with three small boys preparing for their school years and growing up fast - a juxtaposition both groundbreaking and touchingly personal.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.35

  Lars, Piers and Ian are exceptional triplet brothers, whose life is an unplifting modern story. They live in England, but have two American mothers who helped conceive them for their single father, Ian. Using his diaries, Ian describes how copes with the enjoyable and at times stressful task of being a father to three children instead of the one he expected. Always one hand short, he wittily describes their daily life, full of the love and bickering among the triplets, and how life led his decision to create a family of his own. Now five years old, the boys have just started school and made their first trip abroad - to meet their two American mothers for the first time and see how they came to be born.