Inconceivable (23 page)

Originally we’d met on an IVF message board. When the pregnancy was certain, I told them first because they all had undergone IVF in order to have their families, so they had a better understanding than most of my friends of what I was going through. The news shocked them, but they rallied quickly and consistently. Most of them I had never met in person, but they became my sanity check. Many times a day we’d convene in a private Facebook group where at least one of them was always available to help me sort through my emotions and reactions. I called them my “Reliable Girls,” and their support was priceless.

Suzanne, my Atlanta Reliable Girl, was the one who organized the Facebook group. She also helped us find our new fertility clinic
in Atlanta and made the introduction for us so that we didn’t have to cold-call and tell the story to the receptionist and everyone else who answered the phone along the way. I even stayed with her when I had to go to Atlanta for tests prior to Jennifer’s transfer. The Reliable Girls counseled me through every prenatal scare and every anxiety-filled moment. Part of their value was not only their incredible ability to empathize with me but also the way they understood Shannon. Having undergone IVF themselves, they could see the challenges of both of our paths. Their advice helped me understand her, and I started to gain the perspective I needed to move forward.

After careful reflection with those closest to me, and especially the Reliable Girls, I realized I wasn’t sure that I should trust my first impressions of Shannon. Although everyone agreed that some of Shannon’s communication had been insensitive, they also appreciated that she too was just trying to do her best in a bad situation. I had judged her so harshly for saying how hard this was on herself, but what was happening to her was unreal too. Every day I woke up unable to believe this was my life. She must have been having those mornings too, which could explain some of her statements.

In one of Shannon’s e-mails, she complained that she felt like a spectator.

Really?
I’d thought.
Wait until I get to watch them take a baby out of me and give it to someone else.

I assumed she didn’t mean me any harm. Despite the counsel of some to keep Shannon at arm’s length, I thought that if I did so I wouldn’t be giving her a chance to understand my despair. We had met each other in a conference room surrounded by lawyers who had advised us on what to say and what not to say. If she came with me to one of my doctor’s appointments, she might see how much I cared about this baby and have more empathy. Also, at Dr. Read’s I routinely had an ultrasound. If Shannon came with me, she’d have a chance to see the baby alive on the screen. This might help her prepare mentally for what was going to happen in just a few months,
and it might help me feel more empathy for her. Shannon agreed to my invitation eagerly.

While my local friends were so impressed that I had extended this generous invitation to Shannon, the Reliable Girls were very wary. They cited some of the e-mail exchanges I’d had with Shannon as evidence that my magnanimous gesture might not be appreciated in the way I wanted it to be. I hoped they were wrong.

The day of the appointment was warm, so I chose a pink maternity blouse and white capri pants. I thought I looked pretty good considering how I had been feeling. I was exhausted. I couldn’t eat past 4:00
P.M
., and I had to sleep sitting up with pillows propped around me because of acid reflux. If I turned on my side, I felt terrible. On the bright side, though, my blood pressure had remained normal. After I’d dressed and gotten MK ready, I called Dr. Read’s office to alert Linda that Shannon would attend the ultrasound.

As I pulled into the doctor’s office parking lot, I found Shannon waving excitedly when she recognized me. By the time I grabbed my purse, she was at my car door with a big smile on her face.

“Carolyn! I’m so happy that you invited me to come,” she said.

“Hi, Shannon,” I said. “I haven’t got a sitter for Mary Kate, so I brought her along. Mary Kate, this is Mrs. Morell.”

“Oh, what a little doll!” Shannon said. “Look at her in her cute little outfit.”

I walked to the back of the car to pull out the stroller.

“Look! We have the same car seats,” Shannon said. “Do you want me to get her out for you?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

Shannon unbuckled MK and put her in the stroller for me. As we walked toward the medical building, I was worried that we had twenty minutes before the appointment. We waited on a bench outside the building. Thankfully, Shannon has the gift of gab, so I didn’t have to say much at all.

I learned that Paul was an electrical engineer. Shannon’s parents lived in the thumb of Michigan, close to a port that my family often visited on our sailboat. Shannon’s only sister worked in a kindergarten classroom, and her brother-in-law was a principal. Her mom also worked in a school. A family of educators is a good thing in my book, as I was sure they all loved children. Eventually we got around to the subject that had brought us together.

“Well, we finally told our parents and Paul’s mom, just the immediate family. That’s it, though. The baby will surprise everyone else,” she said. “Some people we hope never to tell. Ever. My counselor at school says that sometimes it is just better to say as little as possible.

“It’s hard telling people, anyways. The few we have told always end up expressing their congratulations,” Shannon continued. “It feels so weird to be congratulated on something that has been so upsetting to us. No one gets how hard this is for us. Like, we just get to show up at the hospital and bring home a baby. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to experience this with my girls. I have a colleague who is due a few weeks after you are. I gave her all of my maternity clothes, and I didn’t anticipate how emotional it was going to be for me to give those away. I wanted to be wearing them. You know?”

“I can only imagine,” I said. She and I had discussed how difficult this was for her on the phone a few months earlier, but now, listening as she brought it up again, I began to realize how much she was struggling. I was grateful that she was so comfortable opening up, but at the same time I still hesitated to tell her how often I cried or how scared I was.

She’s trying, Carolyn. She’s trying. You could open up
.

No. I can’t. I would only hurt her more.

A few minutes before my appointment, we entered the building and took our seats in Dr. Read’s waiting room. Sean walked in just as we rose to go back for my ultrasound.

I lay down on the table, took a deep breath, and pulled up my
shirt, revealing my pregnant belly to everyone in the room. Linda squirted the gel on my stomach, and I turned my head to watch Little Man pop up on the screen. In an instant, he was there. I glanced at Shannon, who beamed at the first live image of her son she had seen.

“Okay, little guy. Let’s cooperate today and put on a good show for our guest!” Linda said.

Linda completed the basic measurements of fetal growth and amniotic fluid. She put the sensor right next to his heart, and the rhythm of his heartbeat filled the whole room. Linda then gave us a good look at the baby.

“Here are his feet. He has ten toes. This is the top of his brain. We can see all four chambers of his heart. Let me see if we can get a good look at his face.”

And as if Little Man had heard her, he looked right at us, providing a perfect image of his face.

“Oh, good boy. See that? His nose, eyes, lips. We can even see his teeth in his mouth! Now, do you want a picture of his man parts?”

I started to answer, but before I could, Shannon declined. That was when I realized that Linda was talking to Shannon. The extra time looking, the commentary on what we were seeing, were all for Shannon. I turned my stare to the ceiling, beginning to feel like the third wheel, a spectator for sure.

Breathe, Carolyn. Breathe. This was the kind thing to do. Shannon needed to see this child. She needed to see that he is inside your body. This is a good thing. She will bond with her son and understand that he is bonded to you. This will help. Just breathe.

“Okay. All done,” Linda said.

She handed me a towel to wipe off the ultrasound gel, and I sat up. She printed out the ultrasound pictures, and I turned to take them, but she handed them to Shannon.

We exited the room, and I went to the bathroom, shut the door, and pressed my hands to my eyes.

Get a grip, Carolyn. You invited her. It was the right thing to do. Now stop it!

I took a deep breath and went about the routines of a normal prenatal visit. I peed in a cup, stood on the scale, and sat for my blood pressure.

“Hmmmm…138/80. That is the highest you’ve been to date.”

Given the circumstances of this visit, I thought an elevated blood pressure was understandable.

Sean, Shannon, and MK were in the examining room when I entered, and MK already had her toys strewn all over the floor. Dr. Read arrived and started my routine exam. I checked out fine. Shannon remarked that my ankles looked swollen. We all studied my ankles.

“If that is as swollen as they get, you are in good shape,” Dr. Read remarked.

“I’m used to being a lot more swollen by now.”

“Yes, but if swelling is starting, we just want to make sure your health is protected,” Shannon said. “You have this baby whenever they think it is right. We’ll manage with an early delivery if we have to. That would be just fine with us.”

“Well, I’m only twenty-nine weeks. A delivery right now would be a big deal, and I feel pretty good. I think we may make it with this little guy.”

“I just want you to know that a premature delivery is okay with us. If we have to spend some time in the NICU, we’ll deal,” Shannon said.

I appreciated Shannon’s sentiment. She wanted me to know that she was concerned for my health, but at the same time I don’t think she understood the invasiveness of treatment in a NICU. She had taken her twins home after only three days in the hospital.

“Just to be on the safe side, I think we’ll start seeing you once a week from now on,” Dr. Read said.

“Sounds reasonable.”

We finished the appointment and left the office.

“Thanks for coming, Shannon.”

“You’re welcome. It was nice to meet your doctor. Just keep me up to date on what’s going on.”

“Okay. Drive safely.”

With that, we parted. It was all so polite, so genial, as if we were two girlfriends who had decided to share a special moment in my pregnancy. I honestly don’t know how I just popped up off of the table and went on with the appointment after that confusing exchange during the ultrasound. But I did.

There were moments during this experience when I wasn’t sure what I thought, and this was one of them. Yes, I had compassion for Shannon, and I could hold that feeling at the same time I experienced fear and anger and dread of what was coming. One thing was certain: I wanted to get away from all of it and try to clear my head. I wanted to rest and just concentrate on bringing this baby to term healthy and safe, nurtured by all the love I could muster. I could barely wait to get the kids packed up in the minivan so we could be on the road to my parents’ Lake Michigan house.

SEAN

By the third day of coming home to an empty house, I felt melancholy. When I pulled my car into the driveway, I glanced at the basketball hoop I’d put up when we moved here. On summer evenings around this time the boys would be playing one-on-one. Most times I’d put down my work bag and shoot a few baskets with them before going into the house. Then I’d talk to Carolyn about the day while she and Mary Kate played in the backyard. Carolyn would fix dinner when I went for a run or a bike ride. I’d get home in time to spend time with the family. That was all gone for now. The silence in the house amplified my steps across the wood floor.

I changed my clothes, laced up my shoes, secured my helmet,
and threw on sunglasses. With everyone gone, I had decided to step up my training for the Sylvania Triathlon/Duathlon by increasing my workouts to one and a half to two hours. That night I planned to do a twenty-five-mile bike ride and a three-mile run. Soon I was riding past cornfields dotted with farmhouses. The corn was nearing its peak height, which meant the race was just a few weeks away. On this hot summer day, the air was thick and the corn silk tassels on top of the stalks shifted with the breeze. The aroma was sweet, and the only sound was the wind passing through my bike helmet and the occasional splat of a bug meeting its demise as it collided with the front of my helmet. In early August, when the leaves of the cornstalks started to brown, I would know that the race was upon me.

As I rode into the stiff wind, my mind went to Carolyn. The sun was just above the horizon, which meant that it was almost MK’s bedtime. I pictured Carolyn with Mary Kate on her lap, reading her a bedtime story. I wanted to be with them. I started pounding the pedals harder. I pictured us like particles floating in the water of a slow-draining sink going around and around as the water slowly receded. At first, we floated at the perimeter, but we had been picking up speed all through our slow descent until we would soon be sucked into the drain. We’d dealt with so many aspects of this disaster during the previous 175 days, especially the vital decisions—the legal and medical problems, the social problems, the surrogacy—but all of that had taken place at the periphery. Time was drawing us closer and closer to the one thing we had no way to stop—the delivery and handing over of this child to the Morells. I could not wrap my mind around the delivery no matter how many times I tried to picture it.

Our lives had collided with the Morells’ lives, and somehow we’d have to figure out a way to develop a friendly relationship. Carolyn and I were confused about how we should be interacting with Shannon and Paul, and our thoughts and feelings about them
began to fluctuate between keeping our boundaries and letting them into our lives. Carolyn had introduced an idea to me earlier in the day during a phone call.

“I think Shannon and Paul should be in the delivery room,” Carolyn said. “I don’t want to deprive them of seeing their baby born.”