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Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black almost missed the birth of their son as they got stuck in traffic on their way to the hospital.
The couple – who have been together since 2013 – welcomed Robbie Ray into the world via surrogate in June 2018 and while they expected to have a lot of waiting around for the tot to be born, the lengthy drive through Los Angeles' car-heavy streets meant they barely had time to spare when they arrived.
Speaking on the ‘Coupledom with Idris and Sabrina Elba' podcast, Tom explained: “That was quite a day. We were in California and we had to drive quite a long way to get to the hospital.
“When you hear of people that go into labour you think it takes hours and hours and it was rush hour and you know leaving LA in rush hour, it's not going to happen.
“So we had to leave LA and get to the hospital in time for Robbie Ray to be born… We get there and everything was really calm and we were like we might be there for some time …
“We went and got a little drink and came back upstairs and when we got back upstairs and they were like ‘I think it's time to push now' … we were like ‘What we have been here for like 20 minutes'.”
Lance then added: “Three contractions, 15 or 20 minutes and Robbie was born.”
The ‘Milk' writer then revealed they agreed that he would cut the cord and Tom would be the first to hold their son.
He added: “She ( the surrogate) said I could cut the cord and that was really cool and really special… we also made a decision that Tom would be the first to hold him.”
During the interview, the couple also explained how they remain close to the woman who gave birth to their son as they want to be totally honest with their little boy about how he came into the world.
Lance said: “We looked into so many different options and we landed on surrogacy …
“I think we really both wanted to know what it was to have that biological connection. But we were only going to do it, if we could find a surrogate who felt like a part of our family.
“And so it became a bit like dating, it was dating and you're not just dating potential surrogates but also their families. In the US, surrogates have to have already had children so they know what that is and they have to say they're done having children in case anything went wrong … Because in our minds, we wanted our son Robbie to know and hopeful to love so there's no secrets around how he came into the world.
“Because I think secrets have a little bit of shame in them … so we just didn't want any of that … we thought how wonderful to bring a kid into the world who has a really big family.
“We met our surrogate and she's awesome and her family's awesome.”
Tom and Lance feature on ‘Fatherdom', the third episode of the second series of ‘Coupledom with Idris and Sabrina Elba'. It is available to download now exclusively at http://www.audible.co.uk/Coupledom2.
