Stuart Armfield and Francis Haugen have amassed 1.2 million followers on TikTok, and have recently won an award in the Best Parenting at the Influencer Awards.

They use their TikTok page Stuart and Francis to share snippets of their lives as a happily married gay couple who are parents to newborn baby daughter Rebel and son Rio, two, via their surrogates Sam and Carly.

On the social media platform, they have also talked candidly about their journey to becoming fathers of two over the last three years, with all its highs and lows.

Although experiencing having their own family is all their dreams come true, it's not been easy as, in the UK, until a parental order is granted to them by the courts, their surrogates remain the legal parents of their children.

In an exclusive interview with OK! they have opened up about the difficulties during the parental order process with Rio and their concerns about going through it again with Rebel….

"When we went through the parental order process with Rio, we felt like we were being totally judged and that we had done something wrong because one of us had to do a DNA test to show that he was biologically connected to one of us.

It was crazy and sad because even though we had all the doctor's notes about the embryo and egg donor it still wasn't enough so we really didn't enjoy that part of the process at all.

It took eight months for the parental order to be granted and it was a really tough time – it hasn't been difficult for other gay families we have been in touch with but for us it was a real struggle.

We aren't the best at admin but we took advice from other gay dads and filled out our application like they did.

Even though we followed other people's lead we just didn't pass because there were details missing from our reports. It's tricky because it's still so new to so many of the professionals as we are some of the first people to be getting parental orders for surrogacy.

Until a parental order is granted, you're in a funny situation where you don't have any rights so at the beginning, your children don't always feel like yours and it can be really emotional and intense.

When Rio was a baby we had to take him to hospital where he might have needed an operation – his surrogate would have had to come done from Wrexham to sign the form.

We had a similar experience with Rebel recently when we had to take her to a tongue tie specialist and we had to facetime our surrogate Carly. We realised that the doctors just spoke to her and not us.

But our hospital experiences for having both kids were so amazing and everyone was so kind and accommodating to us and so understanding.

Even though we understand the legal side of things is to protect people and the surrogates, the parental order system is archaic and we would love to see it change.

We're hoping to bring about change in the surrogacy landscape and get the government to vote on updating the surrogacy law of 1985.

We'll have to start the process of getting a parental order for Rebel soon, as you have to begin making the application when your baby is six weeks old.

After our experience the first time round, we are a little bit apprehensive about it.

We really hope Carly, who was our surrogate with Rebel, is recognised by the courts for how incredible she is – it's not an easy process.

For us, we care so much about both of our surrogates that we just want to make sure they have a good experience and are able to move forward with their lives as well as being part of ours.

Despite the challenges we have overcome to have our family, we feel so lucky to be gay and our relationship is so strong – we're such a team.

Our family is an extension of our love and we always wanted one biological child each so we're definitely done now.

"We get to be at home and be hands on parents and even though it can be difficult, we wouldn't want it any other way."

Check out Stuart and Francis:

Instagram:@stueyarmfield @francishaugen

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stuartandfrancis?lang=en

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