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Back The Surrogate Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Part One
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Part Two
  39. Thirty-Four
  40. Thirty-Five
  41. Thirty-Six
  42. Thirty-Seven
  43. Thirty-Eight
  44. Thirty-Nine
  45. Forty
  46. Forty-One
  47. Forty-Two
  48. Forty-Three
  49. Forty-Four
  50. Forty-Five
  51. Forty-Six
  52. Forty-Seven
  53. Forty-Eight
  54. Forty-Nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-One
  57. Part Three
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Acknowledgments
  64. About the Author
  65. About the Publisher

But after bringing her in again and again, with the tests never finding any problems, I became discouraged, depressed. It seemed I was in a constant state of being sick. Was she making me sick? At the doctors’ suggestion, we tried every kind of formula and even started her on some solids. Nothing helped. We tried holding her differently and for different periods of time. We changed the sheets and blankets and clothes to different fabrics. We had our home desensitized. Gave her different baths, exposed her to sounds. Increased humidity, smaller spaces. Nothing helped. I was afraid one day she’d die. I feared I was going to kill my child, kill her by not being the right kind of mother. I didn’t know what to do.

And I thought about Cally. What were her days like? Her nights across town? Did she get up with me in the wee hours, woken by the cries of a ghost baby miles away; did she roam the halls too? Somehow I believed she knew what was happening in the darkness of our home, and our narrow hallways and creaky floors where I paced with the stiff infant, listening for our baby’s breath, praying for her to sleep. In the black moonlit nights, as I turned each corner, I half expected to find Cally standing in the next room, her arms extended, ready to take back her baby. Ready to be her mother.

But night after night, she wasn’t there. Just me and the moonlight, the crying and the going stiff, with Hal sleeping soundly. And me, needing to.

Fifty-Three

Cally

MARCH 2003

I thought about Nell every day. Three months without her had been like hell. Sam had driven me back to Minneapolis, and I was alone in my apartment. I’d been ordered to take it easy and not risk my recovery. I was fully healed from the surgery and the postpartum hemorrhaging, but I went in for checkups with my new gynecologist, a woman I really liked. She wanted me to pump and express milk so my uterus would continue to contract and heal. She told me she was cautiously optimistic that someday I would be able to carry another child to term.

But even if I could have another child someday, it wouldn’t be Nell. Longing for her, missing her, the hurt was excruciating. My lawyer was working every angle to get the custody hearing moved up. He said I wouldn’t get my final payment, and I might have to pay some back. I couldn’t think about that. I’d registered for a full load of classes in the fall and a couple courses over the summer. Focusing on college was the only way I could keep from going crazy.