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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

And now I understood why. Because you can’t really explain what it feels like to give birth. Oh, sure, everyone says it hurts. Everyone says it’s the best day of their life. But no one can explain how it feels inside. How the cramps and contractions get worse and worse, building up, maybe for hours, but you lose track of time as you toss and turn on scratchy sheets and nurses try to position you, and they say, “Are you comfortable?” and “Is this better?” and you’re just groaning because nothing feels better, and they feed you ice chips, check your blood pressure, the beeping fetal heartbeat, they stroke your forehead, and they constantly check you down below, then snap off the rubber gloves without really telling you anything that you understand. Centimeters?

And no one can explain that moment. When the beast rises up from the center of the earth and bursts through all the layers of the ground and up into your body. This terrifying thing like a giant fist grabs hold of you from inside and yanks at the womb like it wants to take you back down to the center of the earth, it yanks at the baby to get going, pushes and pulls at the two of you until it happens. And you have lost all control. There is nothing you can do about it. Nothing in the world. You are gone. And all the tubes and beeps and needles and wipes and ice chips and nurses and blue paper sheets, none of that matters. It all goes away, and there is only you and the beast, and you’d better let it go. Let go and help it, ride on it, let it be.

And then the heat arrives. As if a solar flare has landed between your legs, radiating in the very birth canal, to direct your attention (and your pushing) directly into that sun. And you’d better just join with it—don’t fight—just push and push into the hot center. The nurses will say, “Another one now,” and “One more,” and “A big one now,” and—! Out slides the slippery blob, the rubbery miniature human, wet and pasty blue, arms and legs folded, hair slick, squinty eyes, wrinkly cheeks, and the busy people will cut the thick and twisty purple cord and swoop the new thing away.

And all you want to do is stare at it, figure out what happened, what this is, this silky new life, this chalky blue angel with black eyes and red mouth, you want to stare at it, be near it, touch it, but you can’t because the people take it and urgently fuss with it, weighing, sponging, wiping, measuring, and suctioning it. And you can do nothing but watch them work. And wait.