“Was she born three days ago?”
I tightened my arms around my daughter.
“How do you know that?”
The woman swallowed.
“The clinic called me yesterday.”
That was the moment I realized the miracle I had waited forty-two years for might not be as simple as I believed.
I was thirty-three when I froze my eggs.
Back then, motherhood felt delayed, not impossible. I had a career I loved, good friends, and a life that always seemed one relationship away from becoming the one I had imagined.
I assumed I would meet someone.
We would marry.
Then children would come.
The doctor warned me that freezing my eggs preserved a possibility, not a promise.
I understood the words.
I just never imagined how heavily that possibility would follow me through the rest of my life.
Years passed.
There were relationships, including a few serious ones, but none became the family I had pictured.
One man wanted children but not marriage.
