How this couple copes with ‘situations that make mere mortals nervous’

Artist Mel O’Callaghan, 45, felt a magnetic pull to director-designer Clemens Habicht, 42, when he cycled past her one day. Since then, they’ve tackled the seemingly impossible, including the surrogate birth in Ukraine of their daughter, Theodora.

MEL: Around 2000, Clem rode past me in Redfern, Sydney. Something about him stopped me; he was so beautiful, he emanates this kindness and gentleness. A year or two later, I was visiting a friend’s ad agency and Clem was there, showing his illustrations. I thought, “Oh my god, it’s the boy on the bike!” We became friends. By 2002, he’d moved to Berlin, so I went to visit. We floated around the city with me on the back of his bike – and fell in love. It was magical.

We moved to Paris in 2007 and married in 2013. Clem always wanted children; I was never 100 per cent sure. We started trying in 2015. I had four miscarriages; one, at four months, was particularly awful. I lost too much blood and we were terrified. We tried one more time and then we were done. In everything – in our mourning and our confidence that we’d get through it – we were always together.

Then my mother suggested surrogacy. It’s legal in Ukraine, and we ended up choosing Natalya, who was 32 and a child psychologist, with two of her own children. I thought I’d need an egg donor, but the doctors told me I was totally capable of producing viable eggs. I was prescribed hormones to stimulate egg production and then went to Kiev to have them harvested and fertilised with Clem’s sperm. The best one was implanted in Natalya there in 2016.

When we got the call that she was pregnant, I started dancing; Clem just sat there, calm. It was incredible, but terrifying – a baby, biologically ours, growing in this other person in another country. I’m not usually paranoid, but I was like, “This can’t be real.” Natalya sent a photo of herself pregnant and I’d be like, “Do you think that’s a fake belly?” Clem had never entertained my crazy.

Theo came early, in June 2017, and we got to Kiev just a few hours after her birth. She was in a humidicrib and as soon as we walked in, she opened her eyes and stared at us. It was like, “Where the f… were you?” Holding her for the first time, Clem looked so happy. He’s a beautiful dad, always taking her to the beach, fishing, camping. She’s always on his shoulders. We still speak to Natalya every month, on the 19th, the day Theo was born.

“Theo came early, in June 2017, and we got to Kiev just a few hours after her birth.”

My exhibition, Centre of the Centre, was opening at Brisbane’s UQ Art Museum in February 2020, so we came back for Christmas – and then COVID happened. Since I have a lung condition, we still haven’t returned to France. It’s strange because I’m still teaching [at The New School Parsons Paris] remotely and we own a gallery there: I miss our life.

I’m a contemporary artist, Clem is more commercially creative: he makes music videos, is a puzzle designer, does theatre design. He also helps make my artwork. In Borneo a few years back, we were filming in caves six feet deep in guano. There were millions of cockroaches, the whole thing was moving, and we were being bitten everywhere. He’ll dive into bat poo for me!