From here to paternity

18.02.25: HE'S AMERICAN, 6ft 2in, works out regularly at the gym and he's having a baby.

David Solar, now six months pregnant, rubs his swollen belly reflectively. 'I'm sure glad the sickness has stopped,' he says. 'Now I'm just feeling kinda mellow.'

Not everyone is relaxed about Solar's unique state. "It's bizarre, disgraceful and totally unnatural," said Professor Robert Templeton-Mallard of the Bromley Fertility Centre in Kent. "We have advanced reproductive technologies but this is a step too far."

In fact, there is nothing very high-tech about what Solar is doing. Fertility experts have known for years that it was theoretically possible to prepare a man's body with a cocktail of drugs, implant a fertilised egg in his abdomen, then for him to give birth via Caesarean section. But no one had been prepared to do it.

"I had read about all these lesbians having babies together," says Solar, a personal fitness trainer who lives in San Francisco. "Then one day I was watching an old movie about a muscle guy having a baby and I figured why not me and Miguel?"

It took the couple some months before they found a doctor who was willing to help.

"It was a real challenge," says Dr Hi Liu of Designer Genes, a clinic in Santa Barbara. "Abdominal pregnancies do happen in women, although they are very rare ­ about one in every 10,000. They are also dangerous ­ 10% of the women die and 70% of their babies. The placenta will attach anywhere ­ the tricky part is removing it afterwards. But we are watching David carefully and we remain optimistic."

Assuming the birth goes well, the hormones So