After their twins turned 20, one couple had another baby, but it wasn’t to fill an empty nest

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Mark LeDoux and Bryan Carr insist their new son Beau wasn’t their response to empty nest syndrome, and even though he was born this March, he wasn’t even a pandemic baby.

When the couple met, Carr already had two-year-old twin daughters. He was a single man who wanted children and 20 years ago, adoption agencies wouldn’t work with a single gay man unless he wanted to adopt special needs children or, possibly, older children in the foster system that were considered unadoptable.

So he decided to go the surrogacy route and found an agency in Los Angeles to use. Again, he noted, that was 20 years ago when surrogacy was new and unavailable locally.

How did he manage a full time professional career and newborn twins?

“A friend who acted as nanny,” he said. And the two girls have maintained a relationship with her to this day.

Bryan Carr, left, and Mark LeDoux cradle Beau. (Photos courtesy Mark LeDoux and Bryan Carr)

When LeDoux met Carr, he said it was a matter of who he was most crazy about — Carr or his girls. But he quickly realized they were one wonderful package deal.

As the girls remember it, LeDoux was always there. He actually didn’t move in until a couple of years later because he was mostly out of town doing his medical residency.

But once he moved back to Dallas to finish his residency at UT Southwestern, he adopted the twins and they became a family.

That’s when LeDoux said he came out to his family. And while we should never minimize how difficult coming out can be, his was one of the easier stories. He wasn’t just coming out, but, at the same time, he was introducing his parents to their new grandchildren.

“Our girls are very different,” LeDoux said.

Carr said had they not been born together, we wouldn’t even be having the discussion. But their daughters do defy the stereotype of twins.

For instance, they’ve never gone to the same schools. One got into Hockaday and the other into Green Hills.

Now that they’re in college, one goes to UT and the other attends the University of Northern Iowa.

One’s considering law school, the other med school or graduate school, depending where her tennis playing takes her.

“One’s a very old soul,” LeDoux said. “Very intuitive. She observes. The other one kicks the door down.”

Sending children off to college is often a time when parents start to suffer from empty nest syndrome. The house is suddenly quiet. All the daily activity is gone. Meals are for half the number of people. It’s a time to adjust to the next phase of your life.

Not so in the LeDoux-Carr household. In March, LeDoux and Carr and their two girls welcomed Beau into their family.

Mark Le Doux, left, and Bryan Carr with their daughters.

But the two men say Beau wasn’t a sudden reaction to the girls going off to college. He’d been planned for years. They didn’t suddenly just get pregnant.

“We talked about this since the girls were 10 years old,” LeDoux said.

Which meant he certainly wasn’t a pandemic baby either. They weren’t bored at home and suddenly woke up one day expecting an unexpected child. At the time, both girls were home from college because of COVID-19.

There was no empty nest, and they’d already been working with the surrogacy agency for a couple of years.

Because of the good luck Carr had with their surrogacy agency in L.A., they decided to go with the doctor they already knew, even though those same services were now readily available in Dallas.

They recounted the steps the agency walked them through. First they found an egg donor. Then they fertilized the eggs. This time LeDoux is the biological father.

Then they found a surrogate — one who had already had a successful pregnancy — to carry the fertilized egg.

The first time they tried implanting the egg failed. But they had success on a second try.

Carr said the process gets expensive, and the more tries needed, the more expensive it gets.

What was different about this surrogacy was LeDoux and Carr didn’t meet their surrogate until delivery.

“We were in touch by video,” LeDoux said.

While they paid for medical care through the pregnancy and talked on Facetime, because of the pandemic, they were unable to meet in person.

Carr described their new addition as “not an angel and not a textbook baby.” By eight weeks, though, he was sleeping through the night.

And they had the advantage of having two doting big sisters home from school and helping take care of him.

But the girls have returned to campus and the couple is left alone with their new son.

“He surprisingly is not a problem at all,” Carr said. “And he’s just one baby.”

Despite being 20 years older, this time Carr is sharing baby duty with his husband rather than caring for two by himself.

Carr’s advice to same-sex couples or LGBT singles thinking of having children is that children are not a status symbol.

“Make sure you’re having children for the right reason,” he said.

He warns that surrogacy is expensive but then it’s very expensive to raise kids.

LeDoux adds that if you’re having kids for the wrong reasons, “you’ll pay even more to fix things later.”

But if you are having kids for the right reason, there’s never a good time. Or any time is a good time, but there’s never a perfect time.

Carr said something that helped him with twin girls was family involvement. His mom moved to Dallas for awhile when the girls were one.

“Have patience with the process,” Carr said.

Having a child through surrogacy is a multi-year process.

LeDoux said to expect surprises.

“We’re two controlling personalities,” he said. “As perfect as you plan, things are still not under your control.

Let loose the reins. It’s not always up to you.”

That goes from picking the egg donor through the rest of your children’s lives, he said.

Carr said being a parent, “is just as rewarding as I thought it would be.”

LeDoux warned you’ll miss some of the friendships you would have had.

“The friend pool gets smaller,” he said.

But even that’s changed in recent years with groups like Rainbow Round-up made up of hundreds of LGBT families in the DFW area.

“And Cathedral of Hope has a robust children’s center,” he said. “It’s a good place to meet families like ours.”

In addition, Carr served on the board of Family Equality for nine years and is still involved in some committee work that he’s found very rewarding.

Right now, the couple is looking for a nanny. Anyone interested in the position can contact them through Facebook. And we’re happy to help them find the perfect addition to their household with this little plug.

So with their new addition to the family, LeDoux said they’re not starting over again because “your parenting never stops.”

And Beau isn’t a reaction to their empty nest or an accidental pandemic baby. He was very much planned and years in the making.

“He’s just another chapter,” LeDoux said.