And-Then-There-Were-Three

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

1903933730 GBP 6.99

by Ian Mucklejohn

A long-term carer for his disabled father and mother, and the founder of a successful language school, Ian Mucklejohn’s life was full. He had been hoping to share his life with the woman of his dreams, but the task of looking after his parents was ever expanding. The last thing he wanted was to put them in a home and have strangers look after them in their fragile condition. He always wanted to have children and feeling that there was something missing in his life, he contacted a surrogacy agency in the US. It proved to be a struggle to get through the surrogacy procedure, then the suspense of waiting, and ultimately the surprise of discovering he was to be the father of triplet boys.

But the triplets’ premature delivery by Caesarean section in a US hospital was only the beginning of his change of life. Struggling with inscrutable Home Office procedures while trying to establish the boys in the UK, Ian found himself having to deal with an unexpected development: the media. Once his story was made public, the reactions poured in. He describes the astonishing attention generated by every detail of the triplets’ first months - reporters pay a taxi driver to reveal the location of the triplets’ Christening, while all the presents from the many well-wishers on the boys’ first Christmas take three days to open.

Mediating between the business of raising a family and running the language school for foreign students he set up 30 years ago, Ian provides a touching insight into his ground-breaking family's life with three small boys preparing for their school years and growing up fast.