Gay Dads of Twin Girls Share Parenting Journey Before Father’s Day – TODAY
A married couple are sharing their lives as dads of adorable twin girls.
Adam Motz and Amadou “Tee” Lam have 10-month-old daughters, Reve Christine and Sky Khoudia, who were born using an egg donor and a gestational surrogate.
The couple’s TikTok account, 2 Dads 2 Twins, shares their adventures as “gay dads raising babies” for more than 215,000 followers.
“It’s like a scrapbook of some of our most cherished moments, and the fact that people are connecting with it makes it even more meaningful,” Motz, 34, an attorney, told TODAY Parents.
The Chicago couple met on a dating app in 2015. By their second date, they were discussing having children.
“I knew I wanted to have kids, but Adam made it clear that he needed to be married first,” Lam, 40, a property manager, told TODAY Parents. “My clock was ticking and I wanted to be young enough to enjoy kids. My back already hurts!”
They couldn’t do it alone. “We had talked about IVF, surrogacy, fostering and adoption — we were open to everything,” Motz said.
After their April 2019 honeymoon in Key West, Florida, the couple decided on surrogacy, knowing they needed an egg donor. Motz recalled a casual promise made by his childhood best friend, Amy Preister.
“In college she said, ‘If you ever need an egg donor, I will do it,'” Motz recalled. “So I asked if she remembered saying it — and she said yes!”
For their gestational carrier (a person who carried the child but whose eggs are not used to conceive the baby), the couple turned to friend Ayaa Khepri, who jumped at the opportunity to help the family.
In December 2020, Khepri did in vitro fertilization using two embryos (both from Preister’s eggs), one with Motz’s sperm and the other with Lam’s sperm.
Related: 50-year-old mom who carried daughter’s baby gives birth
Along the way, the couple discovered that egg donation and surrogacy wouldn’t be covered by Motz’s Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois medical insurance, as previously reported by NBC News.
“The reason (a BCBS representative) gave was because we were a male-male couple,” Motz told NBC News. The insurer later agreed to cover about $2,000 for the October 2019 egg retrieval, NBC reported, which left Motz and Lam paying $18,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. In 2021, after the couple filed a discrimination complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights, Blue Cross Blue Shield agreed to pay $11,000 to settle the claim.
“(We ended up paying) $100,000 from start to finish, including egg donor-related and gestational carrier costs, medical appointments, hospital stays and other expenses,” Motz told TODAY.
Related: How much is IVF? Surrogacy? Adoption? Here are the financial costs of infertility
The twins were born on Aug. 6, with Reve’s birth at 3:43 p.m. and Sky, who was in breech position, arriving at 10:30 p.m. The girls were named after their two grandmothers.
Although the “survival stage” of early parenthood is over, Motz said, working from home while caring for twins requires a strict division of labor.
“We split the day in half so that one person handles diaper changes and bottle feedings while the other works,” said Motz, joking, “We both get excited for nap time.”
The girls love showing off on camera. “Reve is very much the explorer — she wants to get into everything and is always on the move,” Motz explained. “Sky loves to cuddle up on the couch, babble and laugh, and dance whenever she hears a good beat.”
And the dads’ different dispositions — Lam is spontaneous and Motz is measured — balance them out.
“I’m a naturally impatient person, but the kids teach me patience,” Lam said. “I enjoy life more and feel like a kid again myself, especially during adult-kid play, which I didn’t have a lot of as a child (in Senegal).”
“And Tee is always looking for fun activities with the kids,” Motz added. “It’s beautiful and fun to watch.”
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