Tan France confirms birth of son Ismail: 'We love him so, so much'

"Give our son a warm welcome," the fashion expert, television personality and author wrote. "Ismail France, born July 10th. He came 7 weeks early, so he’s been in the NICU for the past 3 weeks. But, today, we finally got to bring him home. We love him so, so much. Like, fully obsessed. Our Surrogate is doing so great, post labor, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the greatest gift in our lives."

France previously joined A Little Late With Lilly Singh in early June to discuss his impending fatherhood and revealed that he had known what he wanted to name a child since adolescence.

"I have had a name picked out for my son since I was, like, 16 [or] 17, possibly even earlier," France said. "I've always known. When I met my husband, on one of the very first dates, I was like, 'Do you want kids?' He was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, one day I do.' I can't date anyone if they don't want kids. That's just not my goal. And I was like, 'I also know what I want to call my children,' which I know is terrifying for anyone. This was literally within the first week."

France explained that he "needed to know" whether Rob, an illustrator, agreed on his preferred names. He did, and now Ismail is here.

Around the same time as his interview with Singh, France opened up to People about why he and Rob chose surrogacy:

"Surrogacy was the right choice for us, and we wanted to have a donor who we felt was a perfect match for what we wanted our child to be, and what we want for our future and their future.

[...] 

"The person that we have carrying our baby is somebody that is wonderful, and we know that she will take care of our baby beautifully. We see it as, kind of, she's a nanny for our baby before our baby is born, and she's incredible. As far as the donor was concerned, that was a more complicated process, but we really wanted to make sure that the person that we were working with was kind and was going to have the kind of traits that we were looking for in the world [and] that we look for in each other."

The happy couple had begun their journey toward parenthood in May 2019.