Every birth is a minor miracle, but for Jake and Hannah Graf the safe arrival of their baby daughter last Tuesday was cause for particular jubilation and relief.
Millie Winter Graf, believed to be the first baby born in the UK to transgender parents by a surrogate, arrived by emergency Caesarean section, a healthy 8lb 4oz and looking just like her dad.
‘She’s gorgeous! We’re euphoric,’ says Jake, cradling a little bundle swaddled in a white coverlet, and proffering her face to the camera. (We’re FaceTiming). ‘Meet Millie,’ he says.
Jake and Hannah Graf are pictured above with their newborn baby. Millie Winter Graf, believed to be the first baby born in the UK to transgender parents by a surrogate, arrived by emergency Caesarean section, a healthy 8lb 4oz and looking just like her dad
‘I felt entirely overwhelmed when I saw her,’ says Hannah in an exclusive interview — the first since the birth of their daughter.
‘Jake burst into tears, I burst into tears, then Millie burst into tears! I hugged our surrogate and told her that words couldn’t express how grateful we were to her. Then I looked at Millie and thought: ‘Oh my God — this is my baby!’ My brain did not compute it immediately.’
This is entirely understandable. Little Millie’s arrival does take a lot of explaining. The love, pride and utter exhilaration of two parents, besotted with the milky bliss of their first baby, are probably the only non-variables in this uniquely convoluted path to parenthood.
Hannah, 33, who now has a civilian job in finance, was — until she left the military last year — the highest-ranking transgender officer in the British Army.
Having reached the rank of Captain, she came out as a trans woman in 2013.
Meanwhile, Jake, 41, an actor, writer and director, began gender reassignment in his late 20s, having known with absolute certainty from an early age that he was ‘a boy inside’.
Millie is genetically linked to Jake by eggs he had harvested when he stopped taking testosterone for six months several years ago, knowing he’d want to be a parent some day. He chose an anonymous sperm donor to fertilise the eggs and the resultant embryos were stored for five years.
Jake had by then met Hannah. They married in 2018, and last year an embryo was implanted into the womb of a surrogate they’d found through the National Fertility Society. Nine months later, here Millie is.
Pandemics and travel bans aside, Hannah and Jake’s story has been more fraught with complications than most. They married at Chelsea register office in 2018 having met three years earlier. They announced, to the delight of their families, they were to become parents last year
They’re speaking from the Northern Ireland Airbnb, near the surrogate mother’s home, where they’ve been holed up for the past month, awaiting Millie’s birth. Now they are waiting for paperwork clearance allowing them to get home to London. The pandemic lockdown has added to the considerable stress facing this couple.
Hannah admits she worried how she’d react when she held the baby for the first time. Would she ‘feel’ like a mother? ‘Because I’m transgender, biologically I’m at a disadvantage compared with women who carry their own babies,’ she says.
‘When they say a mother instinctively knows her own baby’s cry, I thought: ‘How much of that is to do with pregnancy hormones?’
‘Then I held Millie, skin-to-skin against my chest, and felt the warmth of her little body, a real level of dependency. I knew in that moment I would do anything for her. I thought: ‘I love you already.’
‘I look at Millie and see Jake — she has his almond-shaped brown eyes and dark hair.’
Jake can see it, too, this genetic connection he never thought would be possible. ‘I look at her and see a little me, which is just magical,’ he says. ‘It was such a struggle to get her. Now we’re walking on air.’
Millie was born in Belfast to an unnamed surrogate with two children of her own.
Aside from their immediate concerns about whether they’d actually be able to travel to meet their baby, there were other, more terrifying thoughts plaguing the Grafs during the pregnancy.
‘You think: ‘Will our surrogate form a bond? Will she want to keep our baby?’,’ says Jake. ‘We didn’t think it was likely. She was acting entirely altruistically. She always said ‘She’s your baby,’ but I’m a worrier.’
Hannah, 33, left, who now has a civilian job in finance, was — until she left the military last year — the highest-ranking transgender officer in the British Army. Having reached the rank of Captain, she came out as a trans woman in 2013. Meanwhile, Jake, 41, an actor, writer and director, pictured right, began gender reassignment in his late 20s, having known with absolute certainty from an early age that he was ‘a boy inside’
As it turned out, they arrived in Northern Ireland just hours before the travel ban — after throwing everything into the car, over-packing wildly.
‘We put in a Moses basket, nappies, wipes, sterilisers, a whole wardrobe of baby clothes including 30 vests and babygros — and drove to Holyhead to get the ferry,’ Jake recalls.
Pandemics and travel bans aside, Hannah and Jake’s story has been more fraught with complications than most.
They married at Chelsea register office in 2018 having met three years earlier. They announced, to the delight of their families, they were to become parents last year.
And in an interview with me for the Mail last December, Jake revealed exclusively the miraculous twist which meant he was able to conceive a child.
Jake had also chosen an anonymous sperm donor who was uncannily similar to Hannah, whom he hadn’t even met.
‘I chose a tall, sporty, brown-eyed engineer,’ Jake told me last year. ‘Actually, I picked someone just like Hannah!’
‘But I worried for five years whether the embryos would be OK. The clinic had never carried out a procedure on a trans person before.’
‘Then came the coronavirus,’ Jake told me this week. ‘We thought we’d prepared for everything — even the unlikely event that we’d both die — but we hadn’t prepared for a pandemic. And we were about to have a baby in the middle of it!
The couple had returned from holiday in Miami just before the travel ban began.
‘Hannah’s Army chums said ‘just bolt’, so we threw everything in the car and left,’ Jake says.
After the birth came a flurry of calls to friends and family. ‘Jake phoned his mum and stepdad and said casually: ‘I’m just sitting here with our baby in my arms,’ and they said: ‘How lovely!’
On the ferry from Holyhead, they sat in a corner in face masks, rubbing their hands with sanitiser.
‘We knew if we had any symptoms of coronavirus we wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the hospital,’ Jake says.
‘The midwifery team had said: ‘You certainly won’t be at the birth.’ But we’d made our peace with that. We understood.
‘At 2pm on Easter Sunday — the due date — we got a call. Our surrogate was being induced at 4.30pm. Her own daughter had arrived within 54 minutes, so we were primed and ready to go to the hospital, but nothing happened.
‘By Monday, we were climbing the walls. That evening, our surrogate’s waters broke. We just lay in bed, unable to sleep.
‘At 5am the next day the call came. Our surrogate was being C-sectioned. She’d been in labour for 48 hours and our baby was beginning to struggle.’
‘Then we got a Whatsapp message from our surrogate’s birth partner, saying: ‘Your daughter is born healthy.’
‘We burst into tears, then jumped into the car and drove through to the hospital, arriving at 6am. The midwifery team took us to a little room and we waited there, on tenterhooks, until 9am,’ says Hannah
‘Then our surrogate was wheeled in looking radiant but shattered,’ continues Jake.
‘She said ‘Here she is’, and I held Millie and cried, and Hannah cried and kissed her, too.
‘I gave her a tiny bottle, she suckled, and I was euphoric. Then our surrogate was wheeled out and it was just the three of us — bliss.’
Hannah and Jake, sharply aware of the sacrifices made by the woman who carried their child — the fear she must have felt giving birth in a pandemic; the trauma of the emergency Caesarean — say they ‘cannot encapsulate in words’ their gratitude. ‘She is a hero to us,’ says Jake.
They’ve sent flowers; she, in turn, has expressed breast milk and left it for Millie on their garden wall.
As we talk, Millie dozes and feeds by turns in each of her parents’ arms. Jake, worked as a nanny for 16 years but Hannah confesses she worried about bonding with the baby.
She says: ‘You want to feel as connected with the whole process of pregnancy and birth as possible, which is why we went to the scans and were there when the embryo was implanted.
‘I wanted to feel I was forming a bond with our baby. When I first saw Millie, I felt emotionally overwhelmed. I’d been nervous I wouldn’t be up to the task of being a mum. But when I held her all those fears evaporated. I loved her, with a protective, maternal love.’
Jake, too, wondered if his wife would take to motherhood.
‘I’d looked after kids for years,’ he says. ‘I know what it is to have constant calls on your time and attention. I thought: ‘Hannah has not done this. Will she struggle?’ But her maternal instinct just kicked in. She is amazing with Millie.’
After the birth came a flurry of calls to friends and family. ‘Jake phoned his mum and stepdad and said casually: ‘I’m just sitting here with our baby in my arms,’ and they said: ‘How lovely!’
Jake’s mum, always supportive of her son’s transition, had paid the £17,000 to harvest and fertilise five of his eggs. (They hope for at least one more child.) The whole process — including the surrogate’s expenses — cost around £45,000.
Hannah’s mum, Wendy, a retired teacher, and dad, Brian, a programme manager, are equally thrilled to be grandparents: ‘Millie is their first grandchild. It was a joyous moment when I told them: ‘Our little girl has just arrived. You’re grandparents!’
When Hannah goes back to work after her maternity leave, Jake — who works mostly from home — will be Millie’s main carer. I ask Hannah if she is dreading the return to the office. She is typically sensible and pragmatic
‘I know they’re finding it hard that they cannot physically be here with us and hold her.’
Congratulations have been profuse; only four online trolls have vilified them. ‘There are people out there who feel no one should have helped a trans couple have a baby,’ says Jake.
‘But the nasty comments are a small minority,’ adds Hannah. ‘We’ve had a such an outpouring of love.’
Their surrogate will remain in their lives. ‘We’ll always keep in touch,’ Hannah says. ‘She’s given us the greatest gift of all.’
Meanwhile, Jake and Hannah are settling into their new routine. ‘I’m used to sleep deprivation,’ Hannah adds cheerily. ‘It’s nothing compared with the early days of military training at Sandhurst.’
For Jake and Hannah it has been a thrilling, life-changing few weeks — all to be charted in a Channel 4 documentary to air this summer.
Now they’re a family they yearn to get home. But for the moment, they cannot leave Northern Ireland. Because of the pandemic, they don’t have Millie’s birth certificate and are not yet officially registered as her parents.
When Hannah goes back to work after her maternity leave, Jake — who works mostly from home — will be Millie’s main carer. I ask Hannah if she is dreading the return to the office. She is typically sensible and pragmatic.
‘I’m not thinking about work,’ she says. ‘I’m living in the moment and loving the thought of being a little family unit: just Jake, me and Millie.’
When she’s old enough to understand, her mum and dad will tell her about her origins in an ‘age appropriate’ way.
‘We’re proud of the love that went into bringing her into the world, so of course she will know how it all came about,’ Jake says. ‘We walked through fire to have her.’