Steps - Watkins Planning Baby By Surrogate

Former Steps star Ian 'H' Watkins and his partner are planning to become parents with the help of a surrogate mother.

The British singer and his longtime boyfriend Craig Ryder decided four years ago that they wanted to become parents, and they have now decided on an egg donor, who has offered to carry their child.

Watkins tells Britain's OK! magazine, "We've always wanted to have a family and now we are halfway through our surrogacy process... Well for a long time we didn't know it would be possible for us to have biological children so we started down the route to adoption but we decided not to go forward with it...

"We think we have found our egg donor, and we're hoping to confirm the lady who will carry our baby soon. Sometime this year the eggs will meet the sperm and then hopefully, happy families! We know there's no guarantee, it might take a few attempts."

And Watkins is adamant he and Ryder are determined to be hands-on throughout the surrogacy process, adding, "The donor has similar colouring to us - blond hair and blue eyes. And we'd like to meet our surrogate. And we want to be there for the birth - we're very excited."

And this could be the first of many kids for the Tragedy singer and his partner: "We want to have more children eventually and we want them to be treated identically, so, although we will choose between us who is going to father our child, we'll keep that to ourselves."