Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul Read online

  Together, Caren and Jan researched surrogate parenting, and found a specialist in Milwaukee who could help. Jan underwent a thorough medical evaluation, and then Caren’s eggs were harvested and fertilized in vitro using Eric’s donated sperm.

  Three days later, Caren and Eric paced the waiting room while the doctor implanted four microscopic embryos inside Jan’s uterus. Will any of them really grow into a baby? Caren wondered, but only time would tell.

  Caren refused to get her hopes up. Then one afternoon she called home and retrieved a phone message from the clinic nurse asking her to call back. Caren’s heart pounded as she dialed the number.

  “I wanted you to be the very first to hear the news,” the nurse announced happily. “You’re pregnant!”

  Caren was ecstatic. “This is really going to happen,” she thrilled. “I’m going to become a mom.”

  Caren and Eric accompanied Jan to every doctor’s appointment. The women shopped together for maternity outfits, and every night Caren read baby books so she could follow her baby’s growth.

  “I’m so lucky that we have the possibility of having our own biological child,” Caren wrote in a journal. “I feel such gratitude that we have Jan. Forty-five years old, putting her body, her health and her life at risk so we can have a baby. It’s so unbelievable that somebody would do that.”

  Caren celebrated every new milestone—the baby’s first kick, the first time she heard the fluttery fetal heartbeat. “We’re going to have a son,” she wrote after one sonogram. “You can see everything. He has all his pieces and parts. I’m really starting to fall in love. The nesting instinct has really kicked in. Even though I’m not pregnant I feel more maternal. I spent four hours today putting recipes in a book and making chicken soup.”

  And then, late in Jan’s eighth month, a frantic call from Jan. “The doctor says I have gestational diabetes.”

  “What have I done to you?” Caren blurted, but the doctor assured Caren her sister-in-law would be okay. Her diabetes could be controlled with diet, but just to be on the safe side, they would induce labor two weeks before Caren’s baby was due.

  In the delivery room, Caren and Eric stood on either side of Jan, holding her hands and helping her with her breathing. This is the most wonderful day of my life, Caren thought as she watched her baby emerge into a brand new world.

  Caren sat up all night in Jan’s hospital room holding her newborn son. They named him Blake Jan, in honor of the woman who had made it all possible.

  “How can I ever thank you enough for what you’ve done?” Caren sobbed the next day as she and Eric prepared to take their baby home.

  “Enjoy your baby,” came Jan’s simple, heartfelt reply. All along Jan had felt that Blake was truly Caren’s and Eric’s—that she was merely the infant’s caretaker. “All I did was help him along his way,” she always insisted.

  For Mother’s Day, Jan received a beautiful bouquet. “To my birth mom,” read the card. “You’ve given me the best life a baby could ever have.”

  Today, Caren can no longer imagine her life without Blake. She loves everything about being a mom, and she’s still startled when she looks into his eyes and sees a little piece of herself looking back.

  Now and then in the local market or along the city sidewalks, a woman will rush up to Caren and gaze longingly into Blake’s stroller. “My husband and I have been trying for so long to have a baby of our own,” the woman will lament, and smiling, Caren will reply, “Let me tell you about this little guy right here and what it took to bring him into this world . . .”

  Heather Black

  Breaking the News

  After hearing the news, I floated to the car flooded with questions, wondering how I was going to tell my husband and worrying about his reaction.

  The outcome of the examination I had just completed would definitely change our lives.

  When I arrived home, there was a message on the answering machine; he was working late at the office and wouldn’t be home for dinner—a reprieve.

  Now I had time to plan my announcement. It had to be perfect! After mulling over several ideas, I made my decision and picked up the phone. “What city please?” asked the sharp voice on the other end of the receiver.

  “I need the number for Western Union,” I nervously requested.

  “One moment, please,” she routinely answered.

  I thanked her, then carefully dialed the number: busy signal. So, while waiting a few minutes, my thoughts wandered to my husband, working at his office in a stock brokerage firm. Surely he’ll be able to interpret my message, I thought.

  I had affectionately nicknamed him my Pizza Puff because of his unabashed love for the food. A veritable staple in his diet, he could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner every night, and still have it as a late-night snack. Whenever we went out for dinner, his first choice would be “a new pizza place” so he could compare the product in his quest for the ultimate pie.

  I redialed the Western Union number wondering what his reaction would be when he read this telegram. What would he do first? What would he say? Would he call me right away?

  “Western Union, how may I help you?”

  I relayed the message while my heart drummed out an Indian war chant: RESEARCH COMPLETED stop. CONFIRMING NEW ISSUE stop. MINI PIZZA PUFF OFFERS LONG-TERM GROWTH stop. RELEASE DATE SET FOR MIDDLE OF JUNE stop. PREPARE NOW stop. LOVE YA, HELEN.

  After supplying all the pertinent information, I asked, “How long before this telegram is delivered?”

  “About an hour or two,” the voice explained.

  I placed the receiver back on the phone stand and stepped back, caught in a whirlwind of joy.

  For the next half-hour or so, I paced the floor and watched the clock. I couldn’t wait another second. I picked up the phone and called Dan. I made small talk then finally asked, “Has anyone stopped in the office to see you in the last two hours or so?”

  “No. Why?” he asked quizzically.

  “Oh, it’s just that I know someone is supposed to come in and give you something.”

  “And who might this be?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you. It’ll spoil everything,” I said.

  “Helen, I don’t want to cut you short, but I am in the middle of things here. Either tell me what’s on your mind or we’ll talk about it when I get home.”

  “All right, Dan, I’ll tell you. I sent you a telegram.”

  “You what?”

  “Just listen.” I read him the message and waited.

  The silence was deafening. “So what’s that supposed to mean?”

  I couldn’t believe he didn’t understand. “I’ll read it again. Think about it!” I tried to stay calm.

  “Okay, you read; I’ll write it down. Maybe something will click if I see it in writing.” He repeated my message. “New Issue. Mini Pizza—hey, that’s my name!—June—Long-term growth, hold on Helen, there’s another call coming in. Be right back.”

  Business, I thought, always getting in the way of important things.

  “Okay, I’m here,” came his cheerful response. “Now, let me look at this.”

  I waited for what seemed like forever, desperately hoping the light would dawn. Finally he commented idly, “Sounds like a new me on the way in June.”

  “Yes!” I shouted. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “You mean like a baby? Like you’re going to have a baby?”

  “Not exactly, I mean we’re going to have a baby!”

  “Are you sure? When did you find out? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Just came home from the doctor’s office. And yes, I’m okay.”

  “Wow, Helen! This is great. Hold on.”

  I could hear him shouting to his coworkers, “I’m going to be a father. Helen and I are pregnant!” I could also hear the shout of congratulations.

  “Helen?” he asked.

  “Still here,” I said.

  His voiced cracked, “I’m on my way home!”r />
  All the worries of the evening faded instantly. “Hurry home, Daddy,” I whispered into the phone.

  “I will, little mother,” came his equally hushed reply.

  Helen Colella

  Great Expectations

  The first thing we decided when we found out I was pregnant was to wait until the third month before we told anyone.

  Ten minutes later, I was combing through my address book, calling everyone from our Realtor to my sixth-grade teacher.

  “What do you mean you’re worried about the change in your lifestyle?” several friends with kids said smugly. “What makes you think you’ll have a life?”

  I knew they were wrong. I’d be different; I am organized. I read all the books.

  “Being pregnant is the easiest part,” my mother-in-law said cheerfully during my bouts of morning sickness.

  When I could pick my head up out of the sink, I reveled in the attention of my husband. He fussed if I so much as sneezed. “Stop it,” he’d say. “You’re cutting off the baby’s oxygen.” He developed a new habit of looking down my throat and saying clever things like, “Hello in there.”

  Life and work continued, except that I now had an excuse not to eat sushi. One night we went to a dinner reception. No one asked what I did for a living, though several people did ask what it was my husband did. I fled to the ladies’ room, where a strange woman accosted me in order to share the intimate and horrifying details of her fifty-seven hour labor, concluding with relish, “so finally I told the doctor ‘Give me the knife, I’ll do it myself’.”

  At least these people had noticed. Not like the rest of the commuting world. No one on the train wanted to make eye contact; after all, you can’t offer a seat to a pregnant woman if she’s invisible. One day a blind man got on the crosstown bus, and the person next to me tapped me to get up and give him my seat. Which I did. From this I concluded that men were genetically unable to give up seats. This theory was confirmed one rainy rush hour, when I hailed a cab, and a man in a pinstripe suit shoved me aside. “You wanted women’s lib, now you got it,” he snarled.

  Urging me to relax, my considerate husband rented a movie he thought I’d like. Or he’d like. I squirmed through the entire screening of Alien. But I didn’t say anything. After all, this was the same man who every night put aside Barron’s to read Goodnight Moon out loud to my belly.

  Around this time, my husband also developed the insatiable urge to buy high-priced electronic gadgets. One night he brought home a camcorder and spent forty-six minutes photographing my abdomen. Getting into the spirit of things, I brought home an ultrasound picture of the baby. “But it looks like a herring,” he said. I asked the doctor for another. This time my unborn child looked like Jimmy Durante.

  I read more books. The toilet-training travails of my friends became fascinating. I debated the merits of Super Pampers with the same friend with whom I used to discuss Proust. She took me out shopping to a mall, where total strangers touched my belly like some religious totem. We bought shoes; although I wore an eight, the nine was so comfortable that my friend urged me to take the ten.

  I waddled into my eighth month. My doctor chose this time to inform me that she would be taking a two-week vacation that started a week before my due date. My usually calm husband began preparing labor contingency plans that involved beepers, cellular phones and highway detours that would challenge a SWAT team.

  We took Lamaze. I read more books. The coach quizzed us. I quizzed the class. “What is Bellini?” I asked. “A champagne and peach cocktail?” someone said. “No, a Russian dish served with caviar and sour cream,” said another. “I have it!” said another woman. “An upscale line of baby furniture that won’t deliver on time.”

  In my ninth month, my father decided it was the height of hilarity to ask repeatedly, “You’re sure it’s not twins?” On Tuesdays everyone told me I was carrying a girl. On Thursdays everyone told me I was carrying a boy. I put away the books; my attention span had been reduced to the length of the average television commercial. I learned in my Lamaze class that effleurage is not a type of floral perfume. The same night, my husband gleefully announced to the class that the first thing I planned to do after I went into labor was to shave my legs.

  Ah, labor. “It’s like gas,” my aunt said. “Menstrual cramps,” said my mother. “Nothing to it.”

  They lied.

  I forgot how to breathe. My husband with the high-priced dual-action stopwatch fell asleep timing contractions. My doctor never came back from Paris. The backup doctor I’d never met before was three years younger than I, just starting private practice that very night. He offered Demerol. Being offered Demerol for labor is like being offered aspirin after you’ve just been run over by a freight train. About the time I started pushing, a medical student wandered in. “I know this isn’t the best time,” she said vaguely. “I have to take a medical history.”

  I pushed and panted. “Your pelvis is too small,” said the doctor.

  “With these hips?” I asked, incredulous.

  The anesthesiologist prepped me for a cesarean. “As long as we’re all here, how about a liposuction, too?” I asked.

  Finally they handed me a swaddled lump who looked uncannily like E.T. The nurses were still counting clamps and sponges. A metal ring was missing. Pandemonium in the operating room.

  “Get an x-ray plate up here. I don’t want to have to open her up again,” the doctor said crossly.

  “Me neither,” I said. “Couldn’t you just roll me through the airport metal detector?”

  Five days later, we brought home our son. Waiting for us were assorted grandparents, flower baskets and the hospital bill. They charged us for the x ray. (No ring was found.)

  Reading prepared me for much of this . . . except how passionately I would fall in love with my child. Nor did it tell me this crucial fact: sex is like riding a bicycle. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been, it comes back to you.

  Liane Kupferberg Carter

  2

  NINE MONTHS

  AND COUNTING

  Let us make pregnancy an occasion when we appreciate our female bodies.

  Merete Leonhardt-Lupa

  “I’ve gotten a whole new appreciation for the

  phrase ‘bottom of the ninth, bases loaded.’ ”

  ©2000. Reprinted by permission of Bunny Hoest and Parade Magazine.

  Did You Just Eat a Watermelon?

  I’m pregnant. Very Pregnant. And yes there are degrees of pregnancy. There’s the Little Bit Pregnant where you don’t show yet, you’re always tired and you hang your head over the toilet. (Personally I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the toilet part, and I always show, even when I’m not pregnant, to the point where people ask when the baby is due.) There’s the Definitely Pregnant, where you show, supposedly you glow, you’re always tired and you eat like a pig. Then there’s the Let’s Get Ready For Baby Pregnant, where your belly gets in the way, you’re always tired, you’re counting down the weeks and struggling frantically to get the nursery ready. Then there’s the Very Pregnant. Not only does your belly get in the way, but it can become a lethal weapon. You’re always tired. You don’t know what day it is so you can’t count anymore. You can’t breathe. Your back aches.

  As I said before, I’m pregnant. Very Pregnant. This is not my first. This is my seventh. Put your eyes back in your head. Yes, this is my seventh. God fooled me with the first two. Aside from being tired, I felt wonderful. I barely showed, even at full term, and I could get up and down from the floor as easily and gracefully as a ballerina could. Then number three came. He ruined pregnancy for me forever. I had water retention . . . in my ears. I, who had never waddled, started to resemble a duck. And my belly made it into a room two minutes before I did. By the way, did you realize that a full-term pregnancy is forty weeks, and if you divide that by four weeks (the average month) you end up with ten months. Not nine. Ten. The other pregnancy math I’ve never understood, is when I deliver
a seven and a half pound baby and only lose five pounds in the process.

  When you’re pregnant, you get accusto med to hearing the same comments over and over. “When is the baby due?” My response now: “This year.” “What is it?” I answer, “Well, it’s either a boy, or a girl.” “You’re very big.” (This can come in several forms. “Are you carrying twins?” “You look ready to pop,” and the “You haven’t had that baby yet?” ) In answer to these I find the best response is, “Yes, you’re right, I’m enormous. I hadn’t realized that. Thank you for pointing it out.”

  But the worst thing is when people I barely know touch my belly. I guess they figure that since it’s out there, it’s for public use. Would they touch my belly if I weren’t pregnant? One of my friends commented “Maybe they’re making a wish, or hoping for good luck.” I think the next time people touch my belly, I’ll touch theirs.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t find all this so disheartening if people would ask about me. But once the information about the baby is out, they walk away. It’s like I no longer exist as a human being because my stomach sits in my lap.

  For now I sit, waiting patiently (okay, not so patiently) for signs that my baby is ready to greet the world and reveal its gender. And for those of you who will insist on asking, “When is the baby due?” All I can say is, “Oh, this isn’t a baby. I just ate a watermelon.”

  Anna Wight

  Flying

  The trick for grown-ups is to make the effort to recapture what we knew automatically as children.

  Carol Lawrence

  Recently, my two-year-old son and I were strolling down a sidewalk together. Both in our own little worlds, we hadn’t spoken until I felt a tugging at my hand. Looking up at me, he exclaimed, “Run, Mommy, run!” Gazing back down at him, I almost had to laugh.