Aggregated News
This is not the way that Briton Nadene Ghouri had planned to spend the first six weeks of motherhood.
Holed up in an apartment in central Kyiv, Ghouri only leaves the house to buy food and nappies. Her husband, Sam, is in the UK. Ukraine’s border is closed. But even if there were flights back home her newborn son, Gilbert, doesn’t have a passport.
After ten years of trying to have a family, Sam and Nadene opted to have their son via surrogacy, and chose Ukraine. Unlike other countries - including the UK - there are no legal grey areas in Ukraine when it comes to surrogacy, and it has a reputation for being well-regulated.
After Gilbert was born on 27 February, the couple quickly got his Ukrainian birth certificate and a DNA test, as required by law, and immediately began the process of getting his British passport.
Then COVID-19 happened.
“Sam had to return to the UK for work briefly, with the aim of coming back,” Nadene told Euronews, “and that was the week that the world went crazy...