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Authors: Carolyn Savage

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BOOK: Inconceivable
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The day’s events raced through my mind. We needed a lawyer, and we might even need more than one. What power did the genetic family have over Carolyn, me, and the baby? We needed an attorney to give us clarity on the family law involved. We needed an intermediary who could protect our identity, at least at first, in our contact with the other family. They might want to meet us right away, but why would we need to meet with them until we knew the pregnancy was going to result in a delivery?

And when the secret got out, when Carolyn started to show, we’d have to explain somehow why she was pregnant but we would not be able to keep the baby. We’d have to tell those around us about the mistake with the IVF. That would be excruciating. The only plausible explanation was the truth. But how were we going to tell everyone? And when? If the media got on to this story, they could get things wrong, and that scared the hell out of me.

As I ran harder, sweat dripped down my face. My breaths became stronger and deeper as I got into the rhythm of my run. The day would come when we would have to share our secret, but that was way down the road.
Try to stay in the present
, I told myself, just like Father Cardone said.

The boys. I didn’t want the boys to suffer because of this. They were developing into such good young men, excellent students and very good athletes. I still coached basketball and cross-country at the boys’ school, and I didn’t want to give that up. I couldn’t let those kids on the teams down any more than I could abandon my own boys. Yet if today was any indication, this crisis would probably add substantial hours to my workweek. Well, I’d just have to suck it up and work harder. The tough part would be the duration
of the pregnancy: the next eight months. We’d get through it. We’d have to.

As I exited the park and turned home, I slowed down in order to gather my thoughts. I would tackle the family law issues in the morning by talking to my boyhood friend Marty Holmes Jr., who is an attorney. If we needed a specialist, Marty would know who to recommend.

I took my last fifty strides up the drive to our house, overcome with the enormity of all the things we needed to try to control. I stood outside in the cold for a few minutes looking out at the snow-covered landscape that stretched flat and straight as far as the eye could see. The night was cloudless, and above me I saw a sky thick with stars. Normally this sight would bring me serenity. That night, I looked up at our bedroom window and saw the light on. Carolyn was still awake, and I knew she was suffering. Trauma had forced its way into our home, and I had no idea how or when it would leave.

The simple act of opening the front door without using a key made me feel as if I was leaving my family unprotected. Out where we lived, so removed from any dangers, we rarely locked any of our doors. From that night forward, I pledged to lock the doors and double-check them before I went to sleep.

C
HAPTER
4

Our Cup Runneth Over

SEAN

A
S
I
CAME INTO
the bedroom, I found Carolyn on the phone with the fertility doctor. Why was she so polite with him? I think my flustered look helped motivate her to end the call. As I was trying to get to sleep, the doctor called on my cell phone again. He was making an impossible day worse. I reached to answer it so I could tell him off, but I decided to let it go to voice mail.

The next day Carolyn remained sick. It hadn’t been morning sickness after all, at least not yet. Mary Kate was a little grumpy too, unusual for her. I hoped she wasn’t coming down with the same flu that Carolyn had.

That day I consulted with Marty and his associate Mary Smith, a family law attorney, about writing a letter that would formally sever our relationship with the fertility doctor. Early the next day I made the trip to the fertility doctor’s office. My nature is to avoid confrontation, but I wanted to be straightforward and end the relationship in person.

I’d saved the doctor’s voice-mail message from Monday night, and I listened to it before I went to his office. The message was frantic, and I felt bad that he and his family were suffering so much.
Listening to it again reminded me that we were dealing with human beings and we needed to care for everyone, regardless of what they had done to us. This was a good thought to hold before I sat down with him. I needed to manage my anger and exercise self-control in this meeting. I hadn’t warned him that I was coming, but I figured, after all those phone calls, he’d see me right away. Within seconds, he appeared and ushered me into his private office.

The doctor looked like I felt: neither of us had gotten any sleep. His talk was all over the place—apologizing, offering to give us a lifetime of free fertility treatments, and declaring that this mistake was in no way his fault. At one point he even suggested “reverse surrogacy”: transferring our embryos into the other woman’s body and keeping the baby she delivered. The idea sounded like it belonged in the circus.

I handed him this letter.

Dear Doctor,
You have informed us that three of another couple’s embryos were transferred into Carolyn on February 6 and that Carolyn is now with child. We have received independent verification of the pregnancy. The purpose of this letter is to outline a few items. We have chosen not to terminate the pregnancy. We are requesting that you notify the genetic parents immediately. In the notification process we need to have our privacy protected. Please do not provide the genetic parents any information regarding us at this time, only the fact that we have decided to continue the pregnancy until delivery. We ask that the genetic parents contact our representatives, Marty Holmes and Mary Smith, as soon as they want to establish communication with us. We believe this is the most appropriate manner to open a dialogue between us and the other family. Privacy through this process is very important to us. Doctor, although a very difficult conclusion was reached, we believe that it is not a good idea for us and you to communicate directly regarding this matter and we appreciate you accepting this in the spirit it is being made.
Sean and Carolyn Savage

I went through the letter with the doctor line by line to make sure that he understood our intent. He needed to look me in the eye so that he could get a glimpse of what he had thrust upon our family. In the sincerity of his continuing apology, he gave me a few limited details about the other family, including the fact that the woman had a last name similar to ours. His partner, another physician in the practice, had given the other family the news Tuesday afternoon. I was relieved that they knew, but did they want the child Carolyn was carrying? He answered that question indirectly by telling me that the other family had been scheduled to meet with their doctor in a few weeks to discuss doing a frozen embryo transfer.

I stood up to leave, but he had one more thing he wanted to say. “Sean, I owe everything to you and Carolyn.” I looked him in the eye and could see he was in a bad place. I was not even close to being ready to accept his apology. I was simply angry.

As I walked to the car, the sound of ice crunching with each step and the cold, dreary day seeping into my bones, I reviewed the conversation. I could not believe that he had looked me in the eye and said that he was not at fault. How could he have said he owed everything to us and yet contend that he did nothing wrong? His heart was telling me that he was ultimately responsible, but his brain was making the counterargument that others under him were really the ones who screwed up.

No, doctor
, I thought,
you are responsible for the mistake. You set the tone on how strictly procedures are followed
. Just as we had thanked him for everything he did for Mary Kate’s birth, we had to hold him accountable for everything he did not do to prevent this tragic error.

I got into my car and called Carolyn. As the conversation began, I pulled onto the highway and started the drive to my office. I had worked so very little this week, and it was already Wednesday. It was only the third day of this crisis, and I was already falling behind.

CAROLYN

My new rule was that whenever Mary Kate took a nap, I’d try to take one too. I needed rest. I knew that. But every time I put my head on the pillow, my mind would give me no peace. Physically the baby was no bigger than a speck of sand, but it was everywhere I looked.

I thought about being pregnant. I knew I would feel horrid for the next several months. And if I was fortunate enough to carry the baby successfully, I would probably spend weeks on bed rest with my health endangered and our family life disrupted. I could picture the birth, but my imagination stopped when I tried to picture handing this baby to another woman.

Those first moments when you hold your new baby in your arms are some of life’s sweetest. That beautiful fresh life filled with possibilities, and you are the lucky one who gets to be the custodian. And for couples who have suffered through infertility, cradling that baby has a feeling of a victory too. You beat the odds. You got around the diagnosis.

Then I tried to picture the next part: my arms outstretched with the baby offered up in my cupped hands. The hands were in empty space, nothing but blue sky behind them, while other hands came to grab the baby, and then my baby was gone, gone forever. I could get as far as the arms offering the baby up, but then my mind would clamp down in disbelief. I could not imagine giving this baby to someone else.

I drew my green afghan—my “blankie”—around myself for
comfort. Yes, I am a grown woman who has a blankie. This one is the third I’ve had in my life, purchased after I lost the last one on vacation in 2008. I have a favorite pillow too, and I only sleep with that pillow. I also have to turn on a white noise machine in order to sleep. I guess I am kind of a high-maintenance sleeper. Everything has to be just right, and at a time when nothing seemed right, I wasn’t embarrassed to cling to these little pieces of comfort.

Despite my angst, I tried to be the best mother I could to Mary Kate, who seemed to be coming down with something. She was not her usual cheerful self that morning. Maybe she wasn’t sick. She might have been responding to the fact that her mom was so distracted. I spent considerable time thinking about the mother of the baby I was carrying and how she would be worried. I figured the only way to keep her feeling safe was to communicate with her, but our lawyers advised us to be cautious. Sean’s Tuesday conversation with Mary Smith, our new lawyer, was fresh in my mind.

All communications would be handled by our lawyers. Beyond our commitment not to fight for custody, the other family would get nothing but medical information, at least until we were certain that the pregnancy was viable. I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with this approach, but how could we know? We had no idea who the other family was. They could be people who would want to capitalize on this mistake and sell the story. They might be dishonest or insensitive, thinking it was their right to force us to terminate the pregnancy. What I understood from the lawyers was that, at this point, the other family and our family were, in some sense, adversaries.

I wanted to think that the other parents were good, decent people, but that hope might be setting us up for disappointment. Maybe they were generous—so generous that they would rescue me and my family from this nightmare by allowing us to keep the baby and raise him or her as our own child. I could love another couple’s child. I knew that. It was something I had experienced as a teacher
and a principal. After the baby was born from me, wouldn’t the baby always be in some sense mine?

As I burrowed under my blanket, I tried to picture the other mother. I pictured her as a tall woman, older and more sophisticated than me, with short brown hair, wearing a business suit. This woman was a powerful lawyer or a formidable businesswoman, I imagined, someone who had had significant successes in her professional life but had never been able to have a baby. I could give a gift like that to a childless woman. There was so much that I wanted to say to her, whoever she was and whatever she looked like. All the while, I felt badly for her. She probably had the same fears. She would worry about her baby’s well-being since she had no control over the situation. As strongly as I felt the yearning to keep the baby, I wanted to reassure the other mother that I would treat her baby as if he or she were my own precious child. Every piece of this that was under my control, and each decision I made, would be with the health of the baby in mind.

All of my thoughts about the other couple helped me understand how much this pregnancy had changed my feelings about having another baby. Only a few days earlier, I had been okay with not having any more children, but now I wanted a baby more than ever. Even though I now had to use bifocals to read the ingredients on the baby food jar, and I was bathing Mary Kate in the kitchen sink to protect my arthritic knees, I’d bathe both of them between the coffeemaker and the toaster until they were toddlers, if that was what was necessary. We could still have another child.

Could I still get pregnant? We had embryos that were left untouched in a freezer in the clinic. If I brought the baby inside me now to term, I’d have to wait at least a year before trying to get pregnant again. Then I’d be forty-one years old. Considering my health history and the number of C-sections I’d had, we would have a hard time finding a doctor who’d condone a pregnancy for me at that age. Besides, I didn’t just want a baby. I wanted
this
baby. I already loved him.

Sean called from the road. He’d just fired our fertility doctor, and he said the other family now knew of the error. I held my breath.

“Well, what did he say about them?”

Please, God, please, God, let this be good news.

“He indicated they were eager parents.”

“Then they want this baby?” I choked on my words.

BOOK: Inconceivable
13.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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