Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making

I paused to breathe; he patiently listened.

“You know as well as I do that I just don’t believe in induction. I hate this. “ I whimpered.

“You’ll be fine, m’am, you’re a pro at this.” he said. He’d been in the States for 40 years but his accent was still so thick I never knew if he was calling me m’am or Mom. I could barely make out half the things he said, yet I trusted him more than anyone else with my care. “I’m on call that day so I’ll make sure there’s room for you,” he added.

It was a relief to know that, but not enough to override my distrust in the medical management of an otherwise natural process.

“You’re right to do this. You know that, don’t you m’am?” he asked.  As doubt made its way across my face he took my hands in his. “There’s just no other way that makes sense and this solves a lot of problems for you.“

“Besides, you know you’ll have your baby before that, right m’am? You always do.” I didn’t know what to make of his eagerness to agree to the induction, but god, I hoped he was right.

Did he even know my name after all these years, all these babies we had together?  I wasn’t sure. I wondered, but I didn’t care. All I cared about is how he respected, even revered, my pregnant and birthing body. He’d believed in me even more than I did so many times over the past ten years.

“I know,” I sighed.

An induction was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, but then again, so was cancer. And unlike me, my husband didn’t have any say whatsoever in his condition.