Unusual Family: 2 Dads, 1 Mom, 8 Kids

Feb. 5, 2004 -- In Lexington, Ky., there's a family that consists of eight children, three adults, and every conventional notion of family turned upside down.

There's one dad, Thomas Dysarz, and there's another dad, Michael Meehan. And there's one mom, Brooke Verity, who was only 25 years old when she gave birth to four babies, with Meehan as the birth father, before having another with Dysarz. She also has three children by an ex-husband.

Religious fundamentalists have traveled halfway across the country to protest this relationship. The law reels in the face of uncharted territory. This family's story is messy, lyrical, emotional, stressful, and real — with no guarantee of a happy ending.

Family Values

Dysarz and Meehan have been together for six years. They moved from Los Angeles because they wanted more traditional middle American values around them.

The couple may be challenging convention, but they are decidedly conservative. Dysarz is anti-abortion rights, against divorce, devoutly Catholic, Republican. He and his partner are gay.

"We're just people," said Meehan. "I think people stereotype every gay person's like this, every Catholic's like this."

Meehan is an attorney and a former sheriff's deputy. Dysarz is a hairdresser. Together they opened a successful chain of hair salons and then began to plan to have a family.

Kentucky law doesn't allow gay couples to adopt. But in 2001, one of their clients who had three kids of her own, understood how much children would mean to the two men, and volunteered to carry their children for them.

Verity even agreed to put her life on the line for nearly nothing beyond expenses. Based on a standard agreement for surrogates, she would get $9,000 for living expenses and $750 for maternity clothes, in return for not smoking or drinking during the pregnancy and agreeing to never attempt to obtain custody after the birth.

"There's nothing like hearing your child's cry for the first time, and I just knew that I wanted to do it for someone else," she said.

Meehan supplied the sperm, and Verity became pregnant. But there was a problem: she was carrying five embryos, and the doctor insisted that at least one should be terminated for the safety of the mother and the others.

Dysarz is religiously opposed to abortion, and had a terrible time coming to terms with the choice. "I felt like I was the only one fighting for the last baby at the time," he said.

"I cried the whole way," Verity said. "It's a hard decision but one that had to be made."

One After Another

At 30 weeks — 10 weeks early, Verity was an awesome sight, and the doctors decided they would have to perform an emergency caesarean on her. On July 26, 2002, Taylor Meehan, the smallest quadruplet at 2 lbs, 14 oz, and only girl, was born. Jacob, Michael and Tristan followed, the largest at 3 lbs, 7 oz.

Verity admits she started to feel a little conflicted at the time. "I cried a lot. A lot of tears," she said. She did petition the courts to terminate her parental rights — but even as she did, another roadblock turned up for Dysarz and Meehan.

The court appointed someone called a "guardian ad litem" to argue for the children's rights — who rejected Verity's wish to give up her parental rights. It was the first time a guardian rejected the wishes of a surrogate.

Fearing the court would rule against them, the trio withdrew their position, and planned to take their case to a different court in a different jurisdiction.

Not a year after she had her quadruplets, Verity kept her promise to Dysarz and agreed to have children again, with him contributing the sperm.

But this time, the agreement was not for $9,000, but for cosmetic surgery. "I want to get my tummy tucked," she said. You can't have eight babies and still look good.

Familiar Relationship Problems

Dysarz's son Brandon, was born just weeks ago, on Jan.10. He and Meehan now have five babies under the age of 2.

But the reality of so many children is taking a constant toll. The two men are very different in some ways. Meehan is more disciplined, while Dysarz is more impulsive.

"His way of parenting is more the discipline type, structure," Dysarz said of Meehan. "Mine is more like the loving, you know, make sure that they feel like they're loved."

Meehan said, "The thing that bothers me is when Thomas disagrees with a decision I make, and says something that, it's not, I disagree with you, but almost critical of me in front of the children."

It's a tug of war parents all over the country might recognize. One in four marriages break up in the first few years of a baby — and they're usually dealing with just one.

And like so many marriages, the old wounds still exist. Dysarz still feels badly about having to terminate one of the embryos. "There's a certain part of me that won't let me get close, as close to Michael, because of that," he said.

With stress mounting at home, other issues also remain unresolved. Dysarz and Verity haven't discussed whether she will relinquish her parental rights to Brandon, but she is planning to start the process of giving up her parental rights to the quadruplets.

"I've been back and forth about it," Verity said. In the meantime, she is going to work at the hair salon where it all began.