Page 5 of The Surrogate Mother
Ironically, it was Sam who initially pushed for us to have a child while I resisted.
Not that I didn’t want children—I definitely did, but not until I was at least thirty-four, when my career was on solid footing.
Denise had ranted long and hard about what motherhood would do to my prospects at Stewart, and it had left an imprint.
I wanted to wait. Thirty-five, I told Sam when we got married.
Maybe thirty-four, depending on how things are going.
Sam felt differently about it. His own father had been forty when he was born and then died suddenly of a heart attack when he was in high school.
His dad never got to see him graduate high school or college, never got to see him become a professor, never got to be at his wedding.
Although he’s in much better physical condition than his father ever was, Sam was terrified of being an “old dad” and missing out on large chunks of his children’s lives.
“I don’t want to die when my kids are still in school,” he said, his voice breaking.
So right after we got married, he started gently pushing for us to try for a baby. I was only twenty-seven at the time and it felt inconceivable. But when Sam hit thirty, his pleas became more insistent. And then Shelley and Rick decided to start trying, so I finally gave in.
When I first stopped my birth control pills, I was some combination of nervous and excited.
I joked with Sam that I hoped it took more than a month or two to conceive.
Still, I was surprised when my first pregnancy test was negative.
As a healthy twenty-nine-year-old woman, I had always assumed that the second I missed even a single pill, I’d be instantly knocked up.
It was a reprieve though—one extra month without worrying about the responsibility of impending motherhood.
Sam and I laughed it off, saying this way we got to have more fun trying.
After six months, we weren’t laughing anymore.
Sam went to get his sperm checked. His boys were perfectly fine, and due to our relatively young age, my OB/GYN encouraged us to keep trying for another six months before we got too worried.
Those six months went by, Shelley gave birth to her first child, and I still didn’t have a positive pregnancy test. It was time to investigate further.
And that’s when it all went downhill.
My doctor told me I probably had suffered some sort of infection that left deep scarring in my uterus and especially my fallopian tubes.
Natural conception, she told me, would be impossible.
We went straight for IVF, even though I was warned even that had a low chance of success given my “inhospitable uterus.” Sam gave me hormone injections at home to stimulate egg production, but when they retrieved my eggs, those too were deemed to be “poor quality.”
I felt like an absolute failure as a woman.
My uterus was damaged, my eggs were poor quality, and all our attempts at IVF were expensive disasters.
I was wracked with guilt that my “normal” husband couldn’t have the child he wanted all thanks to me, even though he swore again and again that he didn’t blame me.
Meanwhile, my boss Denise was utterly unsympathetic about my need to rush out to appointments with the fertility specialist, or about the meeting I had to reschedule when my single successful pregnancy aborted itself after three short weeks.
For a time, I was obsessed with trying to conceive.
I dove into it with the same intensity that had made me so successful at my job.
I went vegan for a while. I drank something called “fertility tea” that tasted like the dust from our coffee table.
I visited every infertility forum I could find and became well-versed in the lingo: TTC meant “trying to conceive” as in “I’ve been TTC for three years with no luck.
” AF meant “Aunt Flo”—the dreaded monthly blood that meant another failure.
DPT meant “days past transfer” after an embryo was transferred into my uterus—a countdown until the next time I could POAS (“pee on a stick”).
And then every time a woman on the board would announce her pregnancy, we’d all congratulate her, but I’d get a sick feeling it would never be me.
If it were up to me, I might have kept going with IVF until we were destitute, but it was Sam who brought up the idea of adoption.
It will still be our child, he said. I resisted, having heard horror stories from other women on the forums about adoptions gone wrong, but Sam again pushed until I gave in.
He was right—we wanted to be parents and this was our only option.
Once we became immersed in the adoption process, I grew cautiously optimistic.
I had wanted a child for what felt like forever now—it was a dream come true that it would soon be a reality.
Unfortunately, nothing in the adoption process was quick.
After carefully deciding on an agency, we had to complete a homestudy, which was the full body cavity search of the adoption process—the agency’s social worker visited us repeatedly, requesting every legal document that had ever been issued to us in our lifetime.
I didn’t understand how they couldn’t just look at me and Sam and realize we’d be good parents, but I guess there are guidelines.
After our approval, the search began for a child to match us with.
Sam was open to older children, but I was adamant about wanting a newborn.
During all those years of trying to conceive, I had dreamed of a tiny little infant, and I couldn’t let go of that.
Sometimes I felt guilty about it, because I knew there were older children who needed homes, so we agreed our second adoption (and possibly third, if we got to that point) would be an older child.
But I wanted to experience having a newborn.
Just once. And it cost us a year of being rejected by multiple pregnant women until Janelle finally made our dreams come true.
Well, almost .
And now, after having it all for a very short time, we have nothing again.
“What now?” I whisper to my husband.
Sam drops his head back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes glazed. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own misery that I forget it means just as much to him as it does to me. He wanted a child even before I did. This is killing him—I can see it in his eyes.
“I think we should look into adopting an older child,” he finally says.
I suck in a breath. “Sam…”
“I know,” he says tightly. “I know you were hoping for a newborn. I know . But Abby, there are so many young kids out there who need a home.”
I look over at the tiny bassinet that nearly broke my knee.
It’s trimmed in yellow ribbon with little pink flowers on it.
Yesterday, when we still believed we were going to be parents, I had laid out a little outfit inside the bassinet.
A blue onesie barely the size of my hand, paired with tiny yellow socks.
I remember putting one of those little socks in my palm, marveling at how tiny it was.
How could a human being have a foot tiny enough to fit into that little sock?
I kissed the sock gently, knowing it would soon warm the tiny foot of my infant son.
I know it sounds silly, but I had my heart set on a newborn. I don’t feel ready to let go of my dream of holding an infant in my arms—of sliding a tiny foot into that little sock.
“We bought all newborn stuff,” I point out. “The clothes… the crib… the bassinet… the car seat.”
“So?” He rolls his head to look at me. “We can buy all new stuff. It’s just stuff , Abby. ”
Yes, it’s just stuff. And it isn’t the stuff that’s made me hesitant to do this.
“Everyone wants newborns,” he says. “But the kids in the orphanages… they need parents so badly. I want to do that, Abby. I’m sick of waiting for a newborn. I just want for us to be parents to a child who needs us.”
He’s right, of course. I’ve got to let go of my stupid fantasies from my days of TTC. It also doesn’t escape me that if Sam wanted kids so badly, he could dump me for someone like April. His sperm is normal . I’m the problem.
But he’d never do that.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”