by Sara Connell
We began to talk about potential scenarios and timing, but stopped ourselves. Even in the exhilaration of possibility, I felt too guarded to think too far into the future. My father yawned and announced he was going to bed. Bill left next, retreating upstairs to his computer. “I need to unwind,” he said. My mother and I had pulled our chairs closer so that our knees were almost touching. I pulled the letter out and set it on the table, smoothing its pages with my fingers. My mother held one side while I held the other, re-reading the remarkable words. The small candles had burned down to liquid in the tin holders.
“We should probably go to bed, too,” I said, not wanting to leave the moment, the candles, my mother’s hands.
Bill was already asleep by the time I crawled into bed. I pressed my cold feet against his legs. His body was always warm. Lying there, I remembered a talk I’d seen by an artist in Chicago. I’d forgotten her name but remembered with clarity her saying that she had come to a point in her process where she almost exclusively followed her wildest-sounding ideas. “I believe the crazy ideas are my truest inspiration,” she’d said. “They are the ones that have become my greatest successes.”
Bill rolled over and laid his arm over my chest. I lay awake for some time, eyes open, praying that this new idea was an inspired crazy idea, rather than just a crazy one.
We had our first appointment with Dr. Colaum on a Wednesday in mid-August. My mother had flown into town for the meeting, and the three of us barely spoke on the forty-minute drive to Evanston.
I felt like a charged particle, bursting with potential energy. I’d reminded myself repeatedly in the past six weeks not to think beyond the appointment: We were meeting with Dr. Colaum for an exploratory discussion only; nothing would be decided today; there were other options should this idea turn out to not be valid. I told myself these things, but the truth was, I was already invested in this idea. I felt in my soul that my mother had come upon something great and now the medical viability of this vision was about to be determined.
As Bill turned the car into the COS building parking lot, adrenaline shot through my body.
“I hope we don’t show up to find men in white coats waiting for us at the office,” my mother joked. But in fact she was naming the fear we’d voiced more than once since we’d decided we’d go through with the consultation.
Wanting to give Dr. Colaum time to respond, I’d presented our idea in a letter—a letter that took me seven rough drafts and sixteen pieces of stationery to write. I’d sent the letter two weeks before the appointment. All we knew walking into the office was that Dr. Colaum had received it and agreed to the meeting.
While I’d been composing the letter, my mother had gone back to Alexandria, where she’d heard from a friend about a women’s conference in Albuquerque. The conference was taking place also in August, so we booked two places and made our appointment with Dr. Colaum for the Wednesday before the conference began. We’d meet with Dr. Colaum that morning and fly together to New Mexico the following day. “If she wants to do any follow-up testing, I can come back through Chicago on the return trip,” my mother had said on the phone once we had an appointment. The thought that we could be taking next steps was thrilling.
Dr. Colaum met us in her office; it was the same as it had been each time we’d prepared to start an IVF cycle: I allowed myself to hope. Dr. Colaum invited a spirit of optimism metered with a heavy dose of science. She continually looked for options and focused on positive actions. Today, though, I could not bring myself to meet her eyes when we entered the consultation room. I focused on her hair, pulled up in her usual bun on the top of her head.
Rachel dragged an extra chair across the room and positioned it in front of Dr. Colaum’s desk. The room contained the now familiar Frank Lloyd Wright artwork and framed photographs of Dr. Colaum’s many grandchildren. But the desk itself looked bigger, even though there were now three of us sitting across from Dr. Colaum, whereas before it had always been just Bill and I. I thought of the axiom about there being strength in numbers.
Dr. Colaum regarded us each individually. Rachel took a seat in a chair on Dr. Colaum’s side of the desk, pen poised over our folder, like a court stenographer ready to take notes. I looked at our folder; once flat and pristine, it was now frayed at the corners and over four inches thick, containing ultrasound photos and notes from the past five years of fertility processes. My throat felt dry; I wished I’d brought a glass of water in from the waiting room.
“I read your letter,” Dr. Colaum began. I tried to gauge her point of view but was unable to detect anything from her body language. Her face was inscrutable.
“I’ve done some research,” she went on. “As you already know, there have been some cases of successful pregnancies in postmenopausal women, including surrogacy pregnancies through IVF.” She seemed to be speaking unusually slowly, elongating her words and pausing between phrases. I sensed hesitation, but it could have been my imagination.
“Such pregnancies are possible,” she said, rephrasing what she’d already said. Finally, she pulled her reading glasses off her nose and let them dangle from the chain between across her chest. “Why don’t you ask me what you want to know?”
Bill spoke first, his question already poised like slingshot. “When is such a pregnancy possible?”
“A pregnancy is possible any time a woman still has a functioning uterus. A pregnancy such as the one you are proposing is feasible if a woman has a healthy uterus, is in excellent overall physical health, has normal to low normal blood pressure, and has had previous successful pregnancies.” I felt encouraged and sat straighter in my chair. I looked at my mother, whose eyes had widened, and nodded.
“From the information you’ve shared with me,” Dr. Colaum said, now turning to my mother, “Kris, you fit this profile.”
What followed took on the form of an interview. Dr. Colaum asked my mother questions about vaginal births, tearing afterward, menstrual cycles before menopause, and symptoms during. My mother hesitated a few times, looking at Bill and me for cues about how descriptive to be. At one point Bill asked me in a whisper if he should step out of the room, but this was only the first of the awkward moments to come. They came to be amusing.
“Stay,” my mother said. “This is something you may have to get used to . . . ”
“ . . . if you go down this path,” Dr. Colaum said, finishing my mother’s sentence.
“Do you think we can pursue this?” I asked, calling the question. I could bear the anticipation no longer; I wanted to know. Bill and my mother leaned forward in their chairs. The room was charged with our hope.
“If we were to pursue this,” Dr. Colaum said, emphasizing the word “if” yet again, and addressing my mother, “Kris, you will need to have a battery of physical tests and get the approval from an OB who will take you on as a patient. You’ll need to have legal documents drawn up and signed, and you’ll all need to have a psychological evaluation, which Illinois law requires of all parties engaging in surrogacy.”
“But we can pursue this?” I asked, reframing my question. “A surrogacy pregnancy with my mother is a real option?” I sat on my hands to keep them still.
Dr. Colaum didn’t answer right away.
After a moment she said, “Providing your mother meets the medical baseline criteria, then yes,” Dr. Colaum said, “it is possible.”
I held my eyes open, not wanting to breathe or blink.
I realized in that moment that I felt suspended in time, that I wanted more than anything in the world for Dr. Colaum’s answer to be an unqualified yes.
I would have loved to have had a pregnancy with just Bill and me. But the new place, a surrogacy with my mother, called to me as a song in my heart. “The body never lies,” my holistic medicine teachers in London had said over and again.
When had our relationship changed? And how? Friends would later ask me about this, having heard me talk about how distant I’d felt my relationship with my mother to be
. I cited what the therapist in London had charged me with: offering unconditional acceptance to my family and working to change myself. At the time her words had seemed cryptic, but I could see fruits from the seeds that she planted.
I wasn’t the only one to change, though. Mental-health professionals like to say that when one person changes, the entire unit can change. In our case, I think my mother and I both changed. And I had begun to think that it was perhaps our desire to find and follow our individual calling that moved us out of the way so that the love that had always been there could flow through—the love now a force bringing us together for an experience unlike anything either of us could have imagined.
“What other questions do you have?” Dr. Colaum said. The memory of London and therapy had spun me into another place. I sat on my hands again to ground myself.
“What are the risks to my mother?” I asked, fully back in the room. This was the question Bill and I had committed to ask at the appointment, should the conversation progress this far.
“If you prove to be in strong overall physical and reproductive health,” Dr. Colaum said, addressing my mother again, “there are only slightly elevated risks compared with those in a normal pregnancy. Elevated blood pressure can occur,” Dr. Colaum said. I waited for her to continue, to say something horrible, something life threatening or compromising that would constitute too great a risk. Dr. Colaum looked at my mother for another moment, as if she were trying to assess her emotional makeup. Dr. Colaum’s glasses rose and fell against the silk of her dress with her breath.
“Fatigue,” she said, finally.
We waited. I held my breath again. I waited for “fatigue and mortality,” “fatigue and possible stroke.”
“Fatigue?” my mother said. “You mean I’d be tired!”
“Really tired,” Dr. Colaum said.
My mother leaned far back in her chair and began to laugh. “Tired!”
“If your blood pressure was stable and if there were no other issues that can come up with any pregnancy, then, yes, I think fatigue would be the main symptom caused by age,” Dr. Colaum said. “Be clear these are big ifs,” she said.
My mother continued to laugh.
“I was tired when I had no help and two children under five to run after every day. I’m retired now—I don’t have to do anything. If fatigue is the big factor, I think can handle it.”
Dr. Colaum studied my mother in a way that suggested she approved.
“We’ll know more after your tests,” Dr. Colaum said.
Rachel touched Dr. Colaum’s shoulder and whispered that her next appointment was in five minutes.
“Other questions?” Dr. Colaum asked. I hadn’t imagined the appointment would take us so far, and yet I couldn’t think of any other questions to ask.
Bill cleared his throat. “I have one—something I feel it’s important to ask.” Dr. Colaum nodded.
“What is the difference between a thirtysomething uterus and a . . . ” Bill halted, his face reddening for a moment as he searched for the right word.
“An old one,” my mother offered. “It’s okay,” she said to Bill, placing her hand on his arm. “I am old; it’s a good question.”
“The medical term we use is ‘advanced maternal age,’” Dr. Colaum said, “advanced maternal age being anyone over the age of thirty-five.”
Bill poked my ribs through the chair. According to that definition, I was only one year away from joining this group.
“There’s no difference,” she said, answering Bill’s question.
My mother’s mouth parted. I pulled back my head, uncertain if I’d heard her correctly.
“The age of the eggs in the ovaries is the primary factor of age in fertility,” Dr. Colaum said. “In a certain capacity,” she said, a small smile breaking over her face, as if she were having the opportunity to share something little known and rare, “the uterus doesn’t age.”
Rachel said, “Okay, then,” signaling that we needed to stop.
“Tracey can give you a list of our recommended OBs who can do the baseline tests,” Dr. Colaum said. If you’re willing to come to Evanston, I recommend Dr. Allen at Evanston Hospital. His office is just three blocks from here.”
As we gathered our things to leave, Dr. Colaum stood up to see us out. “If you are approved for the surrogacy,” she said, “we would be honored to be your fertility team.” She gestured my mother to her desk and showed her a photograph of her sixteenth grandchild in a gold frame. As Bill and I exited the door, I heard her say to my mother, “You are an extraordinary woman.”
We were jubilant on the way home. Bill was the most reserved, saying that we still had to go through the screening tests, which would be extensive. But he smiled and held my hand across the front seat. “I wish you could have seen Sara’s face when Dr. Colaum said the idea was possible,” Bill said, looking at my mother through the rearview mirror. “I thought she was going to faint.” I nodded and laughed. I was still taking fast, shallow breaths.
My mother and I continued to celebrate cautiously in Albuquerque. The conference opened with a twenty-minute silent meditation and a concert of several female artists. We sat on folding chairs in a large hotel ballroom filled with three hundred other women. I remembered meeting a mother and daughter once at an aromatherapy workshop I’d attended in England. They both had pale, creamy skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. All weekend I had watched them, probably conspicuously, as they sat, the sides of their arms touching at a worktable, holding smelling strips under each other’s noses, testing each other’s blends on their wrists. I envied their shared interests and tangible closeness. I tried to imagine my own mother and me attending such a workshop, but could not.
And now my shoulder touched hers in the ballroom, where speakers were presenting on and we were discussing creativity and personal empowerment and the sacred feminine. When one of the presenters talked about the importance of finding a calling or purpose, my mother poked my arm. “They should take your vision workshop.” We imagined presenting the workshop there.
“Hopefully, I’ll be home with a baby!” I said, and she squeezed my hand in my lap.
In between speakers, we spent our time talking about “the vision.” We explored the hotel gardens, filled with rows of leafy plants, the air thick with the smell of cedar from the mountains nearby. We couldn’t rehash the meeting with Dr. Colaum enough.
We ate dinner one night in the Old Town district of the city. On the porch of a hacienda-style restaurant, we ate red and green chilies and dipped warm sopapillas into honey while we talked about the female reproductive system and menstrual cycle and how mystical the female body seemed.
In the mornings, while walking down a stretch of industrial road to conference site, we broke into a skip, chanting, “No difference! No difference!” to the outstretched desert sky. Dr. Colaum’s revelation about the uterus had become our mantra.
We made an appointment with Dr. Allen for the week after the conference. As the day approached, my mother and I seemed to take turns being nervous. Riding up to Dr. Allen’s office, we were both antsy. Bill was in D.C. for the day, meeting with a television network about a new show he was going to executive produce. I drove my mother to Evanston, relieved for the moment that we had only our emotions to manage. My mother held her purse in her lap; a banana and a bottle of water peeked out of the top. “To show Dr. Allen I’m healthy,” she said.
“I also brought a pad of paper and a pen to take notes.” She was like a student on the first day of class. Her fingers kept clutching and unclutching the black leather straps of her bag.
“Now I know how you feel,” she said after we’d driven another mile in silence. “I’m suddenly self-conscious about what my body will be able to do.”
“I hear you,” I said, trying my best to separate the memories of my previous fertility appointments from this one.
Dr. Colaum made it clear she would work with us if we had an OB’s approval. I had the noxious thought
that Dr. Colaum had only said yes to appease us.
Dr. Allen didn’t have a five-year relationship with us. He didn’t know anything about my history. Our meeting that morning would be the first he’d hear of our proposal.
My mother began listing points to share with Dr. Allen:• normal physical two years before
• no abnormal Pap smears or mammograms
• exercise five to six times a week
A smile pulled at my lips. I might be scared of Dr. Allen’s response, but I was not worried about my mother’s physical abilities. Her ribcage held a healthy heart and her body was built of long, lean muscle. My hands were clenched on the steering wheel and I focused on relaxing my grip. I reminded myself that the women in our family had unusually low blood pressure. The highest either my mother’s or mine had ever been was 100/70, even when stressed.
The traffic slowed for several minutes near Lawrence Avenue, but opened up again north of Devon. We arrived at the hospital, parked in the garage across the street, and took the elevator up to Dr. Allen’s office. There we sat waiting, nervously waiting to get the go-ahead for the next step of our journey.
Dr. Allen came to the waiting room to greet us himself. He was ex-military and looked it with his closely cropped hair and towering height. At sixty-one, he still possessed the trim, muscular build of an active duty officer. On the way to his office he shared that he started his career in the army before his enjoyable twenty-five-year career in obstetrics. I imagined he inspired great confidence in a delivery room.
He guided us into a small consultation room with a single metal desk and three chairs. He invited us to sit and finished his introduction by saying that his team worked with a lot of high-risk cases. I sucked in a breath. Dr. Allen seemed forthright and skilled. I believed he would listen and give us an honest opinion.
Dr. Allen asked me to begin and to detail my pregnancy history and why we had come to see him. He showed emotion, twice, at the stillbirth of the twins and at my mother’s offer to be our surrogate, moving his head back in the chair slightly and letting out a small wow.
