-My daughter's going to be born in 2 1/2 weeks.
I need to go, like, meet her and try to bring her home.
Growing your family through surrogacy is really complicated,
and doing it in the middle of a global pandemic
is exceptionally difficult.
Right now, I'm in Kiev, Ukraine.
Yes, I'm bribing some government official
to, like, process paperwork.
I don't even know how we're gonna get you into the country.
What if the baby gets sick?
What if the surrogate mother gets sick?
How do we now solve this much more complicated problem?
When this baby's born, I feel like I'm going to, like,
flip over the coffee table,
and I'll probably lock myself out of my apartment.
Boom. Four days left on my quarantine.
I'm very tired. This is probably a terrible idea.
Every good project has a cool code name.
I decided to call it Operation Independence Day.
If I'm not back by the Fourth of July,
then like that just sucks.
♪♪
So we were planning for my daughter to be born
via surrogate in Ukraine.
And COVID hit and changed everything.
They closed international borders.
That was the moment that we were really just like,
"Oh, my God, how are we going to get into the country?"
My wife still has health challenges,
and the potential of being exposed to coronavirus
is very scary.
So once we decided that I was going to go by myself,
we had to come up with a plan.
The plan was to fly to Minsk, have a driver drive you
to the Belarus and Ukrainian border.
Get out of the car.
Walk for what is about 3/4 of a mile
through three major, like, immigration military gates.
Get a new driver to take you the rest of the way to Kiev.
Well, that's gonna be really hard.
We got wind that a Ukrainian national airline company
was making flights to bring Ukrainian nationals home.
I was able to get support from empathetic people
to add me to the passenger list of this flight.
I bought a ticket from Paris to Kiev.
I learned that I'm only allowed to take carry-on luggage.
And we're just, like, throwing stuff out.
And that felt painful.
Lo and behold, I found a flight
that was going from Zurich to Kiev.
I've been in Kiev for 14 days.
I still feel like I'm only 20% of the way through this story.
There's so much more that's going to happen next week.
♪♪
Here we go. Time for another selfie check-in.
♪♪
What do you think?
This guy loves quarantine.
My quarantine ended today,
and I walked for two miles to get to a baby store.
Look at these frickin' cute baby booties.
-My husband and I make a great team.
We're very clear about what we want in life and we're planners.
Our first son was born via surrogate
in Delhi, India.
-My entire life, I've always wanted to be a father.
I think I've always been very dad-like in my jokes.
-[ Laughing ]
-You've lost your mind!
My wife had just some health issues that basically made
sort of the traditional path to parenthood not possible.
-So I actually I was quite sick for a long time.
It became, like, clear that I wasn't going to be able
to have my own or carry my own children.
And that's really when Ryan and I started talking about,
well, what -- what are our actual options here?
-There's a lot of perception
that surrogacy is this very negative,
exploitative process.
It's typically like wealthier people
who are going through the process.
I think that's true because it is expensive.
We definitely looked into adoption
and the information that we got,
it would take an unpredictable amount of time
with an unpredictable amount of cost.
Going through Ukraine
looked like a much more predictable path.
But global pandemics are hard to predict.
Just got word that baby girl was born.
Everyone is doing okay.
I'm just waiting for the taxi right now
to take me to the hospital to meet baby girl.
First time I've been in a car in three weeks.
[ Birds chirping ]
Hi, baby.
♪♪
Yeah.
I'm your daddy.
Yeah.
♪♪
[ Baby fusses ]
You have a lot to say.
-The baby is healthy.
The surrogate mother is healthy, and our baby weighs 10 pounds.
Just a crazy feeling.
♪♪
-Say hi to your mom.
-Hi, baby! Hi, baby!
Mama loves you.
-Get up close.
-Bring her close. Even a little closer.
I just want to see her little face.
Aww!
-Hi, Indi.
Are you having a fun adventure?
Not being able to be there for our daughter's birth
is so heartbreaking.
I feel like I'm not able to officially be her parent
until she's in my arms.
But there's also kind of this other side,
which is just how strong he is
and how strong we are as a family.
That makes me proud. So.
I've been in Ukraine now for six --
This is week six, which is just such a long time.
And it's -- it's really lonely here.
[ Indi cries ]
Shh.
Usually there's like a... [ Indi crying ]
...30-minute period of time every day where, you know,
things fall off the rails.
Usually it's Indi who's crying. Sometimes.
It's emotional. It's honestly hard to know
if it's just pure sleep deprivation
or if it's just pure joy.
I know it's a concoction of the two of them
that just messes with your brain and your heart.
If I'm not back by the Fourth of July,
then, like, that just sucks.
Anyway, we're at the part of the journey
where we're really trying to get everything in order
to make it back home.
We need to get all the paperwork in order
so that Ukraine allows us to leave,
and we have to get a passport together
so that Indi is allowed to enter the United States.
There's not, like, good process around,
like, releasing babies to just fathers
when the mom is absent,
and so it requires some extra paperwork,
requires extra understanding.
The plane takes off in now less than 48 hours.
Still don't have the birth certificate,
still don't have the passport.
So tomorrow is this really important day.
A miracle could happen.
We have somehow miraculously got a birth certificate
at the very last moment.
Message Megan -- I'm like, "We got the birth certificate!
We are going to get the passport right now.
But I urgently need a translation of it."
And she was like, Don't worry. I'm on it."
Snap of a finger. I get these like two
wonderful translated birth certificates in my e-mail.
I forward them on to the embassy.
They say, "It looks great."
We're on our way to the US embassy
to get Indi a passport.
I'm here at the embassy.
We just drove up. Crazy day.
[ Indi crying ]
Are those tears or tears of joy?
Because we're going home. Going home.
We're going home.
-Who's coming home tomorrow?
-Daddy and baby sister and...
Daddy!!
-Indimari, you were quite the little project.
We wanted you so bad
Dad went on this insane adventure
around the world alone.
There is nothing that we want more than to have you
and have you home and to be a family of four.
♪♪
-Hi! -Hi!
-[ Laughs ] -Hi!
Hi!
-I want to hold my baby. Wonderful.
-Hi! Come here, big man.
[ Grunting ]
-What's this for?
-That's to help me breathe.
Look! Want to see your sis?
-You see her?
-People throw around the expression
that you'd go to the end of the world for someone,
and for me, like very quite literally,
I wouldn't go to the end of the world for my daughter.
So maybe we're gonna do a little a little manicure here.
Yeah. What do you think about that?
I'll take that yawn as an emphatic yes.
[ Whooshing ]