Belabored Chapter 30: Tom and Emma

 “You cannot contract to sell a baby. If they legalize this contract they may soon start bringing poor women in from other countries just to be breeders... Nature’s laws have to supersede man’s law.”

 – Mary Beth Whitehead, on her groundbreaking surrogate mothering court case

              “So how’s work been going, Ted?” I ask my brother-in-law after filling my plate with a variety of unhealthy holiday goodies. We’re having a post-New Year’s celebration with Emma’s sister, Linda, and her husband, Ted. Em hasn’t been herself since we got the diagnosis about Matthew, and I thought being with her sister would cheer her up. She and Linda have been close since they were kids, and Ted’s not a bad guy, either.

              We have to celebrate a week late because both of our kids took it into their heads to contract the flu on the 31^st. So, instead of watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, we watched our younger guy, Kevin, spill his guts – literally – all over the living room rug. I told Em I would clean it up, but she likes to do everything a certain way. So instead, I “de-grossed” Kev in the tub while Em scrubbed the mess, her swollen belly sagging over the foul-smelling carpet. Tears stood in her eyes. She wouldn’t admit she was upset, but I know my wife.

                Ted, who works for a graphic design firm in the city, responds to my question about work.

               “The job's OK, I guess. Everything’s hectic, what with the downsizing and restructuring, but I’m just glad I didn’t lose my job with the layoffs last summer. It’s just a pain to have to put in ten to twelve hour days because they let so many people go and won’t fill any positions.”

I’m not one to complain, but I feel an odd responsibility to chime in with some negativity of my own. Misery loves company, I guess.

“I hear you, man. School’s the same way. They’re not laying people off yet, but they’re sure taking their pound of flesh with all this state testing and the department of education breathing down our necks about every little thing. We’re working day and night to prove the district’s making ‘adequate yearly progress.’ Meantime, the burden’s all on the teachers. The parents say, ‘Jump!’ and we have to say, ‘How high?’ It really sucks.”

              Lull. Once we hit our stride, Ted and I can converse for hours, but it always takes a bit of doing to find a topic of mutual interest.

“How’s Emma feeling?” he asks, then realizes we’re there to have fun and not discuss weighty subjects like bad prenatal diagnoses. “Oh, sorry, man, you probably don’t feel like talking about that tonight.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I answer. “She’s doing OK. We’re both getting used to the whole thing. Gonna take some time. What about you guys? What’s the latest?”

He laughs in a humorless way.

“Ha! Now there’s a subject that should be off limits! I thought the adoption system was screwed up, but it’s running like clockwork compared to the foster care system. We had yet another glorious visit with Danny’s birth father, where he showed up half an hour late and threw a huge fit when the social worker told him he couldn’t see the baby. He knows the rules, but I guess they don’t apply to him.”

              Ted’s referring to the 18-month-old they’ve been fostering for the past six months. Danny is Ted’s sister’s son, and he’s had a rough start in life. His mom’s on drugs and the dad has been arrested I don’t know how many times for dealing. The guy’s clever, though, and the cops can never seem to make the charges stick.

              The sad part is Ted and Linda want to adopt the little guy, even though he’s a real handful. The poor kid clings to Linda like glue, doesn’t want to let her out of his sight. Screams bloody murder if she even leaves to go to the bathroom.

              They’ve spent gobs of money over the past four or five years trying to adopt, and it always blows up in their faces. Twice they got real close, only to have the door slammed shut in the end. That’s bad enough, but to add insult to injury, all the money they shelled out for fees and the birth mothers’ expenses goes up in smoke. It’s the only business I can think of where you know up front the whole thing’s a crap shoot. No refunds, no guarantees.

Ted seems to be waiting for a comment, but I’m not sure what to say. I just shake my head and roll my eyes in sympathy.

“But wait. It gets better. After he huffs and puffs and the social worker has to pretty much throw him out of the office, she turns to us and says, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Genovese, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. In spite of Mr. Sanders’ behavior, in all likelihood, he’ll be granted custody in the long run. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, after all you’re doing for little Danny, but I’ve been doing this job for a long time. That’s usually the way it works, unless he ends up in prison. The system really does try to reunite children with their biological families.’ Can you believe that?” 

“That is really criminal,” I say with disgust.

                                                            ***

              From across the room, my sister, Linda, hears Tom use the word “criminal,” and picks up on it.

“Emma, speaking of criminal, you mind if I run something past you?” she asks me.

“Go for it, Lin.”

 “OK. Well, you know Ted and I have really been robbed with this adoption business a couple of times now, right? Well, we’ve actually been considering going in another direction.”

This piques my interest. It might be nice to think about someone else’s parenting problems for a change. I go over and over the situation with our unborn Matthew constantly in my mind. Sometimes I can handle it, and I feel like it’s actually doable. Other times, I turn into a gelatinous mess of tears and terror. Let me focus on poor Linda’s issues tonight.

“Yeah, I can’t disagree with you there. You guys have really been through the wringer with the traditional route. I can’t blame you for looking for other options. By the way, Danny seemed to go down easier tonight than last time we were here. Is he coming along?”

“I hope so. Yeah, I think he is getting better in that area. He’s such a cuddle bug at times, but other times, he throws these wild tantrums and we don’t know how to calm him. It’s like he has two different personalities. Do your kids do that?”

I have to think about how to answer that. My boys are no different than most children; when they don’t get their way, they scream and fuss. What I’ve noticed about Danny, though, is he becomes almost hysterical and is pretty much inconsolable until he exhausts himself and falls asleep. In my heart of hearts, I think Linda may be in for much more than she bargained for if she takes in this child.

Fortunately, Linda continues before I have to think of a diplomatic reply to her question.

“Well, anyway, I was starting to tell you about our plans.” She hesitates, as if weighing whether or not I can handle the subject she’s about to introduce.

“The thing is, I don’t want to be insensitive. With all you’re going through, maybe this isn’t the time to –”

“No, of course it is, Lin. I want to hear it. Definitely.”

“Well, alright, if you’re sure. We’re prepared for the fact that we may not get Danny. Ted’s sister doesn’t want to be bothered with him, and she’s not clean anyway, so she’s not gonna put up a fight. But Danny’s father really wants custody of him, and he’ll probably win even though he’s a really bad apple. It’s a disgrace. But we’ve been through so much, it would be criminal to quit now. So… you’ve heard of artificial insemination, right? Actually, the term they use is ‘intrauterine insemination.’ Well, the doctor we’ve been talking to thinks that might be a good idea for us. He says it’s pretty affordable, and if that doesn’t work we can try in vitro – but that costs a boat load.”

This catches me off guard. The little I know about reproductive alternatives makes the whole business seem like an engineering project. “Concocting a pregnancy” is the phrase that springs to mind. Fortunately, it stays in my brain rather than exiting my mouth. How dare I, for whom pregnancy happens with almost as much regularity as sock changing, make that kind of judgment on my poor sister, who’s desperate to raise a child – anyone’s child.

She’s waiting for a response. I think fast and decide the safest place to go would be finances.

“So … how much are we talkin’? If you don’t mind my asking, I mean.”

“No, not at all, you're fine. In the neighborhood of 10 to 15 thousand. The place has a sliding scale. Our paper work’s not all in yet, but they’ll give us all the numbers when it is.”

I groan.

“Wow, that is a bundle. Do you guys have it?”

“We’re working on getting a loan. Those two failed adoptions set us back a lot. They don’t give refunds, you know,” she adds with disdain.

“So it sounds like you guys are pretty set on this.”

“Well, like I said, it’s our contingency plan if things don’t work out with Danny.”

I’m afraid to ask too many questions, so I just emit a non-committal “Hmmm.”

Linda pauses for a minute, then seems to make up her mind to tell me everything.

“Worst case, we hire a surrogate.”

After picking my jaw up from where it landed someone under my rib cage, I say, “You mean somebody else to carry your baby?”

“Yeah, basically. I mean, it would be ours, really. I mean, my egg and his, y’know. Just somebody else to sort of, incubate, in a way.”

A siren goes off in my head.

 “Wait, what about that case 20 or 30 years ago? What was it called? Baby X? Something like that. Where the birth mother sued to keep the baby ’cause she changed her mind. Remember that? Honey, you don’t need that kind of trouble.”

“Yeah, Em, I know what you’re talking about. ‘Baby M’ was the case. Trust me, we’re not going there. We read up on this stuff and talked to a lawyer. That happened ’cause it was actually her egg and she didn’t wanna give up her own baby, so the courts felt she had a case. What we’re considering is the surrogate would just be a carrier for Ted and me. The entire whole, um, embryo would be from us. See the difference? I don’t think we’d have a problem.”

Another news story is gnawing at me, but I’m having trouble bringing the details to mind. I remember reading about a couple who provided a frozen embryo for a surrogate to carry, but then wanted to back out when they learned the baby would have birth defects.* I start to look it up on my phone, but then I realize Linda wants a sounding board, not an opinion. Besides, this is getting into the realm of too much information, more than I feel I can handle. When she brought up the subject, I wanted to be a good sister and support her, but now her infertility issues are getting all mixed up with my concerns over my own situation. I don’t feel strong enough to weigh all the ethical implications of what she’s proposing while not yet having peace with my own moral dilemma.

I do what women do best. I change the subject.

“Hey, I could really go for a chick flick. You have Netflix, right?”

I pretend not to notice the hurt expression on her face, and snatch up the remote the way Kevin grabs for his pacifier. Tom calls it his personality. We really have to wean him off of that thing.

*The case Emma struggles to recall involved a Connecticut couple who insisted their surrogate have an abortion when ultrasound revealed severe birth defects. The surrogate mother moved to Michigan, where her rights as a surrogate trumped those of the biological parents. The child was subsequently adopted by an outside couple (http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/health/surrogacy-kelley-legal-battle/).