In February of this year, Gavin and Leslie Anne Grimes from County
Wicklow, travelled to Ukraine ahead of the birth of their
daughter days before the Russian invasion began.
As the first missiles were launched by Russia, the couple anxiously tried to make plans
to get their newborn baby girl, baby Tilly, who was born by a surrogate home.
She spent the first week of her life in a bomb shelter
before being reunited with her parents.
Earlier today, I sat down with Gavin and Leslie in to
hear their harrowing story of escape from Ukraine.
So bring me to the night before the invasion.
You're in a hotel, you're in Kyiv.
It's almost a due date.
You're so close, super excited.
And everything was very normal that evening in the hotel, a wedding taking place.
Um, there was wrestlers - the international wrestling team were there having dinner
in a restaurant that we were having our booth today.
Before that, we spent an amazing day with our surrogate
mom and in the park with her little boy.
And, you know, we were talking to her.
What's her view and her husband's view?
And no way was invasion going to happen.
And there's absolutely no way.
And we, you know, through that park, it was just full of
kids, mums and dads going about their everyday life.
In a normal, the Wednesday before was the initial date that was in the media,
that the invasion was going to happen that came and went with, you know.
And so, yeah, we were pretty confident that it was going
to be, you know, fine for our whole duration.
But you went to bed that night.
This was the 23rd of February and everything changed.
Tell me about the moment that you woke up less.
So we both we both woke up together.
We have no idea why we both jumped.
Woke up together.
And then there was another bang.
And we thought there was because it was so busy last night.
We thought there was parties out outside the hotel.
There was fireworks.
There was a lot of, um, there was There was There was groups
of men, kind of in defiance, singing national songs.
Every night We were there, we thought there was there was those guys, right?
Yeah, but then we heard the third bang, and we instantly instantly knew what it was.
It was such.
The sound was such a dull, dull boom.
And you just just you can still hear that sound in your head right now.
And we knew we went straight over to the window, had a look just
to see what we could see and the balcony of our hotel room.
And then the scariest thing that you've ever seen a missile
went straight over our heads and the same again.
It was just like a fighter jet or something was just It was just It was just scary.
And we had a plan in place.
And our plan was to drive to the west of the country,
Lviv, picking up our surrogate mom and her family, her
mom and a little boy and her husband on the way.
So we put that plan into place.
When we got down to reception, the receptions were giving
out, you know, sheets of paper with bomb shelters.
And there was hundreds of these bomb shelters and people were running and panic.
So then you're you're in the car and you know, certainly changed her mind.
She wanted to stay with her family.
She didn't.
She felt it was going to be just as her due date.
She was just wanted to stay.
She wanted to stay.
And she said she was going to be safe and she
thought that the missiles wouldn't last.
And of course, we respected that.
You know her completely.
Her decision.
But we have a little boy at home, so we have to get less less to safety.
So the plan was to get less to that.
They have not come back for the birth.
Yeah, but in that moment, you know, you're 24 hours
potentially from your daughter being born.
The daughter that you have waited for any for for a long time.
And you had to get in a car and you had to leave the city.
What did that feel like for you?
The heartbreaking.
It was heartbreaking.
And
but we knew she hadn't been born yet.
We knew we could.
We had time on our side.
We had time to get meat safety for tiger and time to go back and get her.
And the plan was to get less to live.
Even then I would I would come straight back.
But then you start on that journey and you're driving to the city and you see
these families running out of their buildings, you know, families kneeling on
the ground, praying, Um, since scenes that will stay with us forever
blind panic and fear of what's happening where the next missile hit.
And, um, halfway on that journey, we get reports
that Lviv is under attack as well.
So we pivoted to our Yeah, we went to our next 'Plan C'.
So we went to the Polish border where we had a friend that was going to meet
us, and I was going to stay with him then for a night or two until we figured
out what our next plans, where we get to the Polish border.
And it's only when we get to realise, you know, the scale and the extent
exactly of this refugee crisis, literally tens of thousands of families
making their way to the border and that journey to the border.
I mean, the car, your your shop for your taxi driver
could only bring you so far in the car.
So tell me what happens.
So we got we got really close.
We went in the car 20 hours, and then we were just
We were sitting in the car, We weren't moving.
We had moved in an hour, an hour and a half.
So we said, we'll get a walk.
We heard reports that it will be two hours walking.
And we were like, OK, we can do that like 16 hours.
Yeah.
So once we kept going and going to the keys just got bigger.
And we just longer, longer and 16 hours through the night.
And you're there with your suitcases are empty, baby car seat for
our little baby that we didn't have with us at the time.
A lot of the women there gave couldn't figure out
why you were getting through the border.
Yeah, and that's right.
You know, there was once they saw me getting through,
there was lots of different stops in the border.
I got through the first two and they were trying to
figure out why they thought I was Ukrainian.
They thought I was being carried Lee and and leaving the country, they began hitting
Gav with his suitcases.
They just they didn't want him to go through was it was just wasn't fair for them.
Then he was being pushed back.
Security guys were pushing him back.
He had to make himself her to make them make himself known that he wasn't Ukrainian.
That he was.
He was like trying to escape back to his family, trying to get back to his family.
You get to Poland, you get to safety, you get your hotel, you decided to go for
a nap and the phone call comes in from the surrogate mom Tell is on her way.
Yeah, my wonderful surrogate mom Messages to say She's on the way to hospital.
Labour has started and your little baby girl will be
here soon and she text is the whole way through.
I think it was about three or four hours.
She was texting us and then she said, OK, baby is
coming and we didn't hear anything and we
were like, OK, and then what?
45 minutes An hour later, she's like your baby has arrived.
She gave us the weight, everything and then probably
about another 45 minutes an hour.
And we've got three pictures of Tilly.
Also added up in her little white.
Yeah, they're a little white gown.
She was kind of wearing and just milk drunk.
Just gorgeous.
Safe, healthy and here.
Yeah.
And our surrogate mom doing great as well.
Yeah.
And I suppose at that time you thought maternity hospitals are safe.
She will be okay.
Okay.
And then we would learn that they weren't safe, that they were.
That evening we were told that they had moved the their awards
in the maternity hospital down to the bomb shelter.
So Tilly was now in the bomb shelter of the maternity hospital.
And that's where she spent the next week of her life.
So you got a nanny and experienced nanny to go to the hospital, and
it was quite difficult to get to the hospital to release Tilly.
They were worried about her safety.
Yeah, we had all the documents, everything in place.
And Tilly was ready to leave with the hospital, which and where she
was saying they just had the moral belief that she wasn't.
They wouldn't let her leave.
They wouldn't know this quarter to five.
That evening they released her and the curfew was right.
We're going to start at five.
You're down to the wire.
We were literally got her in the car at a quarter to five.
Yeah, if it was any longer, she we would have missed our window to everything.
Everything we put in place would have, you know, not worked.
So at this point, you're obviously waiting for Italy to come across the border.
How long was that journey and how did you feel at that point?
Because you knew at that stage she was just in a car with the
nanny being driven at high speed out of the country.
And so, yeah, we were in Poland.
We were making our way from Poland to Moldova at the time
to be there, waiting for to leave when she arrived.
Tell me about that moment when you see the car pulling
up and you know the tallies in this.
So we had we were on Moldova, so we had to go into the Ukrainian city closest to.
So we had to go one kilometre back into Ukraine and yep, saw the car then and obviously
we have to do other documents first and all the all the paperwork and then and these
heroes brought our baby towards us and handed it straight to me.
I just, yeah, I got her in
my arms. It was just pure joy.
Just such relief.
And you could just feel this dress just leaving your body almost instantly.
It was just It was just the best feeling just to have her safe in your arms.
And just But just the gratitude that we have, Yeah, never thank them
enough for risking their lives to bring our little baby to us.
I just want to move forward, I suppose to now.
Leslie.
Because Tilly is here.
She's safe.
She's in Ireland.
She's perfect.
Um, but because she was born by surrogacy, she's not recognised as your child.
No.
So we can get chilly through war zone.
We can get everyone to help us get her home safe to Dublin.
But the minute we land in Dublin airport, I am not recognised as their mom.
I have no legal relationship to my own daughter.
Um, a legal stranger.
Um, I can't the public health nurses here just after till he got home.
I couldn't consent to her heel-
prick test on Monday.
she'll be two months.
I can't take her for vaccines.
I can't apply for a passport.
I can't take her abroad. When she's two.
I can apply for guardianship with Gav's permission.
But I'm not her guardian.
I'm her mom.
I'm 100% her mom.