WATCH ABOVE: The birth of their son was captured in a photograph, born the day of the Pride parade 2014, and that picture went viral. Angie Seth chats with the couple a year later.
It was almost a year ago to the day when a picture of two men, Frankie Nelson and BJ Barone, holding their new born baby in the delivery room was taken.
It was a private, special moment between two men becoming parents for the first time.
The photographer, Lindsay Foster, posted the picture on her website and it went viral, getting well over 40,000 hits.
Aside from this being a picture of a same sex couple, shirtless, holding their newborn baby boy, what was also so unique about this moment was that the child was born the day of the 2014 Pride Parade in Toronto – he was a Pride baby and a bit of a celebrity.
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Last year Global News met up with the Fathers just a week after their son was born.
They were overwhelmed with emotion and pride at the thought of becoming new parents and having their baby, named Milo, born during Pride.
The couple said Milo was born via a surrogate, who the couple refer to as family and keep in touch with on a regular basis.
Fast forward a year and Milo is a bouncy, healthy, loud, curious baby boy who keeps both his Dads on their toes, but overwhelmed with joy.
“Life has been crazier and crazier as Milo gets older. I was home for 10 months of the year for parental leave. I was there for the baby sleeping stages and eating stages and BJ has been lucky enough to get the new stage of the baby running around, into everything, pulling everything”, Nelson told Global News.
“When I look at Milo I am still in a little bit of shock that he is here and he is ours and we’re teaching him and bringing him up , like it is still a little surreal at times and then at other times there’s screaming and crying and then it’s oh yeah, it’s real,” Barone added.
This year Pride Toronto 2015 will have a different meaning for both Frankie and BJ.
Instead of holding their annual Pride party, they will be celebrating their child’s first birthday.
They also attended the Family Pride picnic for the first time saying the experience was incredible, getting the opportunity to spend the day with other families and their children.
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In addition to the fact that they are parents now, the couple will also be walking the parade route as fathers, with this year also marking their first Father’s Day.
Barone told Global News that for him, every day is Father’s Day because it is about being together as a family rather than exchanging cards and gifts.
When it comes to parenting the couple said that although they are a same sex couple, Milo will be raised like every other child, in addition to the fact that he will be taught about acceptance, diversity, and awareness.
The Fathers both say at an early age they want to explain to Milo why he has two fathers, whereas other children have two mothers or both a mother and a father.
In addition to that, the school Milo will be attending has many diverse families making it easier, the fathers say, for their son to understand the dynamic of their family.
“As a same sex couple we would be raising our kid like any open-minded family would. And from the people that we know and the neighbours that we’ve met I can’t imagine us raising him any differently than anyone else … you know raise him with an open mind to love everyone,” Nelson told Global News.
So the big question now is will the couple have another child?
They say it’s something they have been thinking about more so these days as they look into the future, but right now as Barone put at the end of our interview, “our family is perfect.”
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