“It was a miracle.
It was a moment of great relief.
I think it was a real miracle for me.
We all felt so proud.
It just felt like a moment, like a special thing.”
When a stranger called him to tell him he had a baby boy, he was a little nervous.
He had been married to his girlfriend for seven years and had been living in Australia for nine years.
But after an ultrasound scan showed he had Down syndrome, he knew he had to have the baby.
He had the baby, and then the news hit him: the baby was going to be a boy.
A few months later, he received an email from his wife, Sarah.
The message said he was going out for a barbecue with a friend, and the next day, the baby would be born.
He was in a celebratory mood.
He wanted to be with his friend, so he asked Sarah if she wanted to come along.
The baby was born on June 13, 2017.
His wife, who was in Australia, cried, but the baby cried for her.
He knew he was the luckiest man on earth.
“We were both happy, but we weren’t sure how to celebrate,” he says.
“I just went, ‘This is amazing’.
Sarah and I both went, and we cried, and she said, ‘He’s the luckier man on the planet’.”
I was like, ‘I’m the luckest man on this planet, I’m the lucky one.’
“Sarah and I had been together for nine months, and it was the first time in our relationship we really had a shared life.
Sarah had moved here, and was going into her first job, and I was going off on my own and not really getting a chance to spend time with her.
I remember sitting down with Sarah and saying, ‘There’s a new baby.
This is my baby, I want to share this moment with her, but she needs to have a look at it before I can share it with her’.”
We had a little moment of sadness, we were like, how could this happen?
We just got on with it.
“The couple’s relationship was on the rocks for a while, but they came to terms with the fact that their baby was different.
Sarah, who had had Down Syndrome, was more sensitive to the fact the baby might have problems.”
For her, I had a normal life, so it was hard for me to feel this baby wasn’t normal,” he explains.”
It was the hardest thing for me, because I know I have such a big family, and all I could do was share it.
“But I also knew that I had to be careful and I needed to have someone with me who understood.”
It took a while for the couple to feel comfortable with the idea of sharing a pregnancy with another person.
They knew Sarah would have a huge impact on their baby, but he felt she would not be able to give up the baby without his approval.
Sarah and he met at a family event and had a conversation about the baby that was so profound it has lasted almost three years.
It ended with them saying: “You’re the luck, you’re the lucky man on Earth.”
The family took Sarah’s baby to a hospital, where they were told the baby had Down.
He has had his second trimester of testing, and his prognosis is good.
“Sarah was just the best thing to happen to me,” he remembers.
“But I didn’t feel like that was the case.
In December 2017, Sarah and his wife went to a local cinema to watch their favourite film, The Lion King.””
It felt like the most wonderful thing in the world.”
In December 2017, Sarah and his wife went to a local cinema to watch their favourite film, The Lion King.
“There were a few people there, and they were really supportive of the baby and were very supportive of my partner,” he recalls.
“Sarah and my partner were very excited about that, and that was a really great thing to do.
It felt so good to share.”
Sarah says the moment the baby is born, he starts to cry.
He remembers feeling the weight of the birth on his shoulders and he looks up to see Sarah holding his hand.
The family decided to hold a birthday party for Sarah at their house, but because of the size of the event, the wedding took place on the other side of the country.
“This was the happiest moment of my life,” he tells Al Jazeera.
“I could go to Australia for a couple of weeks, and there’s a family here that was in Sydney, and everyone I wanted to share it, everyone I needed was there.”
That was just incredible.
I had so much to look forward to.
It really felt like Christmas.
We were all together, and everything was beautiful.
“
He didn’t understand how a baby is different,” Sarah says