Designer Peter Dundas and his partner EV Bousis share the story of the birth of their first son.
On His First Father’s Day, Peter Dundas Shares a Message of Love for All Parents
Peter Dundas and EV Bousis’s baby Alexios Peter Bousis-Dundas was born via surrogate on June 14. We connected on Zoom several days later to talk about the birth, new parenthood, and raising a son as two dads. Today, on their first Father’s Day, we’re posting some excerpts from that conversation.
Peter: Alexios was born on Monday morning at like 2:45, so I guess he’s going on five days now, which is crazy. He’s amazing and it’s an amazing experience, but it was a little bit daunting at first: You’re kind of afraid to go to sleep. Is he breathing? Is he alright? Is he too warm? Is he too hot? Every day he’s changing, and his eyes are opening a little bit more. He’s a real observer.
We started talking about parenthood quite soon after we met. EV brought it up to me and I was all for it. I didn’t think that it was anything we needed to rush, but it’s been quite a long journey. You kind of think that because you have the aid of science that it’s going to be, you know, something easy or something quick, but emotionally and in terms of your involvement in it, it isn’t at all.
From an emotional point of view, making the leap into parenthood, it makes a big change. I used to say, when people asked, ‘what’s your favorite look?’ in a collection, I was like, ‘how do you pick your favorite child?’ I’m not going to be saying that anymore, obviously. It’s really special because he decided to come on my mother’s birthday and, as you know, I lost my mother when I was three years old, so it was really, really special that he came on that day.
EV: Having friends [who’ve had a baby via surrogacy] kind of helped us prepare ourselves a little bit for what the experience would be. And being in LA made everything easier: It’s normal here to have a family the way we’ve created our family. No one kind of looks at you or asks you weird questions. You’d be surprised, people don’t know that much about it or how two men can have a baby, even when we’re living in 2021. We still get questions about it.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Peter Dundas,EV Bousis
