Brian Dowling

Brian Dowling and Arthur Gourounlian charted their surrogacy journey from start to finish for a new RTÉ documentary. They talk parenthood with Mary Cate ...

Only one of them was going to be the biological father and both parties knew and accepted that before embarking on this journey. Arthur loves “matchy matchy” while Brian likes an element of “clashy clashy”. Brian jokes that Aoife was a “diva” when in fact, she was quite the opposite. “She likes the attention.” Arthur swears she likes mixing up her outfits, sometimes multiple times in a day. Now, when she ‘makes strange’, she turns to her papa or her daddy.” Arthur can hardly remember life before Blake, a life that included dancing with Beyoncé, Pink, and Kylie Minogue and choreographing for some of the top pop acts around the world. When we said we were gay, the phone calls stopped.” Arthur hopes that the documentary will help others on a similar journey. It was his choice — I had to propose to him.” “It did get to me a bit. Arthur started to feel disheartened when time and time again, the adoption process didn’t work out for them. Arthur admits he knew next to nothing about surrogacy before engaging with the process: “Initially, my dream — my everything — was to have a child. In the eyes of the Irish law, they allow her to change her mind at any point.” But then it kind of calmed down because they realised, wait a minute, you’re not forcing anybody somewhere in Eastern Europe to do this.”

There was an aww-some moment on Friday's Late Late Show when Brian Dowling Gourounlian and Arthur Gourounlian brought their baby Blake on to the show.

I was good to go." "There’s so much going on behind the scenes with court cases and paper work," he said. "I was really worried about that but it’s so funny to us now, in where we are. "We didn’t know how it was going to pan out. I was ready," she smiled. Brian then spoke about the discussion that developed around what would happen after the baby was born, in relation to Aoife, birthdays, Christmas and all of that. . . "And I said ‘What? "I said ‘I’m serious. We thought she was joking." Brian then looked at Aoife and said: "Then you and I went for a walk in January 2021." "And I’m not sure if I want to have children myself in the future, and to be able to experience pregnancy, and help my brother and his husband to become parents."

Brian Dowling and Arthur Gourounlian spent hundreds of thousands of euro and many years planning before they were able to see their dream of becoming ...

And once you educate and tell the story that we're willing to tell, and I often wonder what families and friends would say "Oh, I would do that for you".' She's given me such creative inspiration and she's still allowing me to have a laugh, I've never worked in radio before and she's like "you're here to have fun- let me worry about that…" The embryologist at the clinic do this constantly and it's just so matter-of-fact. 'We always knew who Blake's biological father was going to be and that never bothered anyone,' Brian explained. Brian is really excited, because this will be the first time that Aoife herself will be discussing her experience. The 34-year-old had offered twice before the couple accepted her offer to carry their daughter but they could scarcely believe that she was serious.

Big Brother winner Brian Dowling and his husband, Arthur Gourounlian, thanked Brian's sister Aoife for acting as a surrogate mother, leading to the birth of ...

Blake is one lucky girl." Another said: "Isn’t #AoifeDowling amazing ? One person wrote: "They are amazing. Another wrote: "Blake is such a cutie. One viewer said: "I wish Brian, Arthur and Blake nothing but absolute happiness." So lucky to have so much love in her life."