Bringing in Finn (28 page)

“Most surrogates get paid for surrogacy,” I said. “They don't front the money.”

“I know you'll pay us back,” my mother assured me. “We need to do the cycle this year, and your father and I have the money sitting in a long-term savings account. We don't need that money right now.”

We agreed to accept whatever we needed to pay cash at the start of the cycle and repay any loan within two years.

“This is it,” Bill said. “At least until we can pay them back.”

“I don't know if my mother is up for three tries anyway,” I said.

 

We flew to
San Francisco on a Friday in May. The city was sunny and warm. We walked from Fisherman's Wharf to the Marina and through quiet, gleaming Pacific Heights and Lombard Street.

I felt expansive looking out over the bay and walking up the steep hills near our hotel in Nob Hill. At the reception on Saturday night, we were invited to share a wish for the new couple. The couple had laid smooth stones and Sharpie pens on a table near the entrance to the reception, next to a placard that asked people to write their wish on the long side of the stones.

“What did you write?” my mother asked Bill and me.

“Fertility,” we said in unison. My sister looked surprised. She had been next to us as we'd written on the stones and had seen no discussion take place between us. Bill and I laughed.

“What else would we write?” he said.

The next weekend,
back in Chicago, a musician friend of mine invited me to a church service where he was performing. We'd met in life-coaching training five years ago, and he now coached musicians on the days he wasn't composing. I had already taken my seat and was studying the program, when I remembered that it was Mother's Day. We had begun our new IVF cycle, and if I'd considered the day, perhaps I would have opted not to come.

Scores of children in frilly dresses and little suits and shorts sat primly, extra well behaved, next to their mothers. Behind the podium was a large banner bearing the message WE HONOR OUR MOTHERS. To the side of the pulpit stood a large vase filled with dozens of red roses. After his talk and my friend's trumpet solo, the minister asked all the mothers in the congregation to stand.

A pocket of pain arose underneath my ribs, spiky and barbed like a briar. The minister waved his arms, encouraging the mothers to rise. As women popped up out of their chairs, the rest of the congregation began to cheer and applaud. As more women stood, some of the men and children began to stomp their feet. The room sounded like a sports arena. I clapped along with them, genuinely honoring these women. But my movements began to feel forced, my face plastic and cold, like a mask. A well of anger churned in my gut. The woman to my left stood while her two young children reached out to touch her arm and cheered, “Mommy!”

I felt an impulse to stand. The words of the Divine Mother echoed in my head, competing with the applause:
You have been initiated.
The remembrance shocked me, and I stopped clapping.
Stand up.
The command came swift inside me.

Why not?
I thought. The minister hadn't said, “Stand if your children are living.” Was I not a mother to our twins, and even to the baby I'd carried for just six short weeks? Just because they had died, did it mean I was not really a mother? I stood. A rush of blood
to my head muffled the applause that continued, now even louder than before. Ushers passed roses down the rows in baskets, smiling and prompting each standing woman to take one. The woman next to me selected her rose and handed the basket to me. I hesitated over the velvet petals, drops of moisture still resting on some of the folded buds. Standing was one thing, but I didn't think I could take a rose. I handed the basket to the usher and faced forward, avoiding eye contact with anyone around me. When the last of the roses had been delivered, the minister invited everyone to take their seats.

As I sat, my heart raced and I found it difficult to breathe. The act of standing had depleted me, and I felt as if the sound of the applause were pressing on my chest.

When it came time for the collection, the woman next to me leaned toward my seat and asked how many children I had.

“Two,” I said. Saying it aloud calmed me for a moment and helped distract me from my racing pulse. Then, thinking of the miscarriage, I corrected myself. “Well, three.” Her eyes looked to the seats beside me—looking for the mentioned children, I imagined. “Didn't stay,” I said helplessly, searching for a nonmorbid answer.

Her eyes widened for a moment, and then she tilted her head, regarding me with curiosity. I realized that I'd confused her. She probably now thought my children had died in some kind of accident or illness, or that I was insane. I regretted having stood up at all.

“And you?” I said, hoping to change the focus. “Two?”

“Two,” she said. “But four total. Two here and two that didn't stay.”

She understood. I looked at her stunning children, smiling and robust with life, with blue eyes and long lashes that looked like hers. I felt a stab of something dark in my chest. I didn't want to envy this woman, but I did. She'd had losses but was now mothering the way I wanted to be, while I stood looking at a crevasse I did not know if I would ever fully cross. I wished then that I had taken
a rose. I would have pushed a thorn into my finger; the physical pain would have been a welcome distraction.

I walked fast toward the atrium the minute the service ended. I wanted to congratulate my friend on his performance and leave quickly. As I exited into the front hall, I felt a hand touch my arm. The woman from my row was standing beside me, her eyes and face wet.

“It would never have occurred to me today to acknowledge all the children I carried,” she said. I forced myself to meet her eyes. I didn't want her to see my jealousy, or my sadness.

“It really moved me,” she said. I nodded and dropped my eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and pressed her rose into my hand.

By the time I returned home, I no longer felt like sticking my finger with the thorns. Something had been transmuted in the exchange with the rose. I held the flower in my hand. It was beautiful, soft, and just beginning to open. I put it in a small vase in the kitchen next to my IVF medications. I felt emptied out from the service but opened as well, opened up for something good and new.

 

When my mother
arrived for her baseline ultrasound a week later, Bill called a family meeting. We were about halfway through the IVF cycle, roughly three weeks from retrieval and transfer. I had taken my evening injections, and my mother and I were sitting at the island in the kitchen while Bill cooked.

“I've been thinking,” Bill said, lowering eggplant cubes into a flour mixture, “that maybe this round we can bring in some lightness. I don't mean half-assing anything with our medications or appointments. I'm talking about lightening up our conversations and watching funny TV shows at night—that kind of thing. These cycles can feel so intense.”

My mother and I agreed to the new intention. We made a few other family decisions as well.

“This time, I'm going to stay in Chicago from retrieval all the way through the pregnancy tests,” my mother said. We all thought waiting for the ten days after transfer together might feel excruciating, but we wanted to eliminate the variable of plane travel.

“I know doctors say there's no way travel that early can impact a pregnancy,” my mother said, “but I want to give this cycle every chance of success.”

We did not discuss what we would do if we were not pregnant this time. I felt, though it was not explicitly stated, that this cycle could be our last try.

My mother's age aside, I didn't know how many more rounds of IVF my body could take. I had purposely not counted the number of cycles, injections, and shots I'd subjected myself to. Presurrogacy, each time my mind had reached to make a calculation, I'd forced myself to stop, fearing a quantifiable number would send me into despair. When I focused on one cycle at a time, the regime felt manageable. Logistically, I'd become so accustomed to IVF cycles that I no longer even thought about the medications between injections. I could administer an intramuscular shot into my buttocks with one hand. Still, my stomach and behind looked like the surface of the moon—bruised and indented—and I lost a few pounds with each cycle that I never could quite put back on between rounds, so I had a slightly starved and pinched look about the face.

As this cycle progressed, we stayed true to our intention and looked for opportunities for distraction and fun. People in Chicago became exhilarated the minute the weather turned warm, rushing outside, flooding restaurant patios as soon as they opened. The path along Lake Michigan was dotted for miles with bikers, runners, and people playing beach volleyball in sand.

Bill cooked inspiring meals, and we watched Will Ferrell movies and comedies on TV. We found an Italian restaurant that made a
macaroni-and-four-cheese lasagna that my mother fell in love with. To her delight, they delivered.

“I'd better become pregnant this time,” my mother said, “as I am apparently already eating for two.”

I worked most days but looked for opportunities to go out with my mother. When I could take time off, we went on adventures. We spent a day in Evanston exploring the lakefront and shops and made periodic visits to the Spice House on Wells Street in Old Town (her favorite store). We tried to carry our intention of lightness into Dr. Colaum's office. We baked cookies for the staff and spent our time in the waiting room wishing for success for every couple there with us.

Bill seemed relieved by the humor and lack of intensity. He looked more relaxed than he had in several years. My father surprised my mother by flying to Chicago to be with her during the week between our procedures and the pregnancy test. The day of our retrieval, Bill and I urged my parents to go out together. It felt right that we would go on our own: as the hopeful parents, there for the big-bang moment when—we hoped—our child or children would be conceived.

As profound as we knew that moment to be, we remained true to our intention of lightness on the retrieval day. Bill loaded his iPod with Bill Maher podcasts. We arrived at RMI in good humor.

The clinic was booked that day, and Rachel told us they'd run out of patient rooms in the back area. “We've made up a temporary space for you here,” she said, walking us to the wall across from the curtained waiting areas. The staff had draped a sheet over a hanging rack in front of two black office chairs.

“We wouldn't normally ask this, but we thought you two could handle it. You're veterans.”

We told Rachel we didn't mind. She rolled the hanging rack in front of the chairs, handed me the set of hospital clothes, and told us
to take a seat. I changed quickly and sat back in the chair. The sheet curtain didn't quite cover our seating area, and we could see the staff coming and going. I set the paper surgical hat aside and Bill turned on a podcast. At one point I laughed and heard the sound echo across the room. I clamped my mouth shut as Rachel walked a couple into the first patient area, the one Bill and I had been in for our procedures for every other retrieval and transfer.

The woman of the couple had a round body and crinkly hair. Her partner was a tall African American man in a striped shirt. Before he pulled the curtain shut, I saw him reach out his hand to help her unwrap the gown and scrubs.

“I can do it,” she snapped, her voice as rigid as her jaw.

“First-timers,” Bill mouthed to me. I nodded and silently wished them a successful outcome.

We continued our game of people watching from behind our curtained-off area. While we waited for the anesthesiologist, Rachel stopped by again. She took in Bill Maher playing on Bill's nano.

“You guys have come a long way,” she said.

 

Within the hour,
a female anesthesiologist whom we'd not met before started me on an IV. She had cool hands and stuck the needle into the vein with one try.

Rachel walked me into the procedure room, and she and Tracey began to count backward from ten. I counted along with them. By four, I was out.

Afterward I was groggy but felt relaxed, even chipper.

“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” I asked Bill.

“I delivered my donation,” Bill said. “And Dr. Colaum reported that she retrieved thirteen good eggs,” Bill said. “Nine look strong for fertilization.”

“Nine is good,” I said.

Once Rachel cleared us to go, I got dressed and we stood at the edge of the room, waiting for Lorelai or Tracey to take me down in the wheelchair.

Tracey permitted me to walk from the front door to the car as long as Bill held my arm and we walked slowly. While we walked, Bill told me that he'd seen the man from across the room go and return with his donation.

“He looked so miserable,” Bill said. “I wanted to tell him that part gets easier. I was sure I would not have wanted someone to say that to me then, though. So I gave him a salute.”

“You saluted him?” I asked.

“I did,” Bill said.

We arrived at the car, Bill assisted me into the front seat, handing me the seatbelt and waiting until I clicked the buckle before shutting the door and walking around to his side.

In the car, he continued the story.

“You know my friend Alan, the one who worked on my account at the agency?”

I remembered Alan, a boisterous man who'd been known as a gunslinger within the agency.

“He and his wife did IVF a few years ago. And he told me that to keep his spirits up he started doing this thing called the victory lap.”