Parents at last! 'WE'VE FINALLY GOT OUR HAPPY ENDING'

Wellington couple Tatjana and Peter reveal the rollercoaster journey to welcoming their two little angels

- Amy Prebble

Tatjana and Peter Kane hope the story behind their much-loved babies Jackson and Amelia, who were born in Georgia to two surrogate mothers, might offer families struggling to have a child a glimmer of hope.

“Nobody chooses surrogacy,” says Tatjana. “There’s usually so much suffering behind the decision – cancer, a hysterectomy, infertility, miscarriages… Before, when I used to see a happy-ending story about struggling people who managed to have a baby, I used to dream one day that would be us.”

The Wellington couple met in Budapest in 2010, when they were both competing for New Zealand in a triathlon. It was love at first sight and Peter got to meet Tatjana’s Serbian family, who had travelled to Hungary to cheer her on, before they even had their first date.

“I don’t know that I got the seal of approval straightaway,” jokes Peter.

“But he definitely did later!” smiles Tatjana, who is also mum to Emma, 19.

Peter, 64, and police IT consultant Tatjana, 53, married four years ago, then underwent numerous IVF procedures to try to have a baby together. Their son Sasha was born in 2020 at Wellington Regional Hospital at 23 weeks old. Tragically, he passed away after five weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit the day before New Zealand went into lockdown.

“We weren’t allowed to be present at his burial due to lockdown rules, which compounded our grief,” recalls Peter, who owns a software company. “We were advised we needed a surrogate, but we were also told it would be years of waiting for an altruistic one.”