Because carrying a pregnancy myself wasn’t considered safe,S, I worked with a surrogate.
The process was exhausting.
More than once, I wondered whether everyone calling me crazy might have had a point.
One longtime friend finally said it outright.
“Margaret, you’ll be in your nineties before she’s an adult.”
“I know.”
“You could miss so much of her life.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why do this?”
Because I had already spent forty-two years wondering what might have happened if I had tried.
I could not spend whatever time remained doing it again.
When the pregnancy test came back positive, I cried alone at my kitchen table.
Then I laughed because crying wasn’t big enough for what I felt.
I followed every appointment.
I studied ultrasound photographs like they contained secret messages.
I bought baby clothes far too early.
When the surrogate first felt movement, I held the phone against my ear while she described it, irrationally hoping I might somehow hear my daughter kicking.
And nine months later, Grace arrived.
Seven pounds, two ounces.
Dark hair.
Tiny fingers.
A furious little cry that somehow became the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
The nurse placed her against me, and I cried so hard I could barely see her.
Forty-two years after freezing those eggs, I was finally someone’s mother.
Bringing her home terrified me.
I had prepared everything.
The crib.
The bottles.
The diapers.
The little wooden dresser.
None of that prepared me for lying awake at two in the morning staring at her chest to make sure it was still rising.
I was exhausted.
Terrified.
Overwhelmed.
Completely in love.
Then, three days after we came home, someone knocked.
Grace was sleeping against my chest when I looked through the peephole.
A woman stood outside.
She looked about forty.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
I opened the door only a few inches.
“Are you Margaret?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes dropped immediately to Grace.
“Was she born three days ago?”
My entire body tightened.
“Who are you?”
