Mommy Man (22 page)

“Did you feel that?” Tiffany shouted.

“Holy crap, yes!”

Tiffany laughed. “That’s Bennett.”

“You can tell which one is which?”

“Yeah, he’s the kicker. He wakes me up at night.”

“Wow, that was Bennett! I can’t believe I just felt Bennett kick.”

“What are you waiting for?” Tiffany asked. “Talk to him!”

She was right. This was my chance—not to lay down some overly thought-out, rehearsed-sounding diatribe but just to chat with my kids. They were definitely paying attention. I leaned over Tiffany’s midriff.

“Hi, Bennett. Hi, Sutton. This is Daddy. Well, one of your daddies. The other daddy thinks it’s dumb to talk to a belly. Maybe you’ll think so, too, but too bad. You’re stuck in there, so you’re going to listen. I really can’t wait to meet you guys. I promise I’m going to love you no matter who you turn out to be, and I’m going to let you figure that out all on your own. Personally, it took me a while. Hopefully, you’ll get to it a little quicker.

“Just hang tight in there. You’ve been doing a great job these last few months, and I know it hasn’t been easy, but it’s all going to be worth it. Just keep taking care of each other, because that’s what a brother and sister should do. Oh, and Bennett, I know it’s fun to kick, but take it easy on Tiffany.”

I looked at Tiffany, and she smiled back at me in a way that affirmed exactly why she’d chosen to become a surrogate in the first place. I turned back toward her belly, correcting myself.

“Aunt Tiffany,” I said. “That’s what you guys should call her.”

23

One Last Peaceful Sleep

T
here’s no perfect time
to have a baby, but if there is an absolute worst time, it has to be during summer movie season. No matter how old Drew and I got, the deluge of heavily promoted blockbusters that arrived on a screen near us between Memorial Day and Labor Day could always turn us back into giddy, Sno Cap–addicted kids. As we approached our due date, we started marking time not by how many weeks our children had been incubating but by what box office smashes we’d managed to cross off our must-see lists. As much as we were dying to see Bennett and Sutton, we were really hoping they didn’t mess up our plans to see the new
Harry Potter
.

With every film that we caught on the big screen, we relaxed a bit more. By the time we saw
The Hangover
, the nursery was set up. Sacha Baron Cohen’s
Bruno
took us past the point of viability. The only thing arriving with the same regularity as the big-studio releases were Tiffany’s false alarms. Just as often as we headed out to the multiplex, we found ourselves rushing down to Orange County to meet Tiffany in Labor and Delivery, only to get a call halfway there that she’d been sent home. We spent a couple of nights sleeping on the Irelands’ couch because Tiffany was convinced she’d be checking into the hospital by sunrise.

We never actually made it as far as the admission desk, but eventually, Rainbow Extensions decided it was time we visited the place where our babies would be born. They set up a tour right around the time Judd Apatow’s
Funny People
came out. Drew and I thought it was unnecessary. We’d been in hospitals before. It’s not like we would notice if this particular Labor and Delivery unit was missing some crucial piece of equipment we wanted them to have. “They call that a speculum? We’re outta here!” We certainly weren’t requesting anything out of the ordinary, like Tiffany giving birth into a vat of butter or a hollowed-out tree trunk or something. Drew didn’t even bother to come with me. There seemed like no point in both of us taking time off from work.

As I entered the hospital, it was just as I expected, perfectly hospital-like. People in white coats, people in wheelchairs, Purell dispensers aplenty. I stepped off the elevator and was greeted by Ann, the woman who conducted these tours. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ann.” So far, this was totally skippable.

Ann showed me the waiting area. Age-old magazines, check. She took me to the nurse’s station. Politely smiling ladies, check. She allowed me to peek into the delivery room. A bunch of equipment I knew nothing about, check.

Then she explained the security band procedure. After a baby is slapped on the butt, sponged of goo, and has its umbilical cord tied off, he or she is fitted with a high-tech bracelet that lists their name, their parents’ names and a UPC code that can be scanned by hospital personnel. Any time a parent goes to visit an infant in the nursery, parent and baby both get scanned to make sure they match up. It was all a means of preventing baby theft, but it seemed funny to me that for their first forty-eight hours, my kids would essentially be treated like boxes of Cocoa Puffs at Shop Rite.

“You’ll need to decide whether you or your partner is going to wear the band,” Ann said.

“We’d each like to have one, actually.”

Ann shook her head. “Nuh-uh. Can’t do that.”

“What do you mean? I thought each of the parents got one.”

“We only have two bands, and the mom has to wear one.”

“Actually, there are two dads and a surrogate. There is no mom!” Over the last few months I’d come to sound like Wes, the president of Rainbow Extensions, when someone brought up the M-word.

“She’s giving birth, so for our purposes, she’s the mom.”

“You can call her what you want. She’s not a legal parent and she’s not allowed to take the kids home, so she doesn’t need a band. Drew and I should have the bands.”

“The babies come out of her, so she needs to wear the band that matches them. It’s a security procedure. And that leaves us one band for either you or your partner.”

“So if she’s wearing a band, that means she’ll be able to visit them in the nursery?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, but it’s a problem that my partner won’t be able to visit them because there aren’t enough bands for him.”

“We only have two bands.”

“We’re having twins. Do the babies split one band?”

“No, we’ll make two.”

“Well, if you can make an extra band for the kids, why can’t you make an extra band for the parents, too?”

Ann and I had reached a turning point in our relationship. I’d thrown an unwanted curveball into her well-rehearsed routine. She stared at me, wearily. “We can give your partner a visitor band,” she sighed. “He can visit the babies as long as he’s with you.”

She meant to placate me, but it only made me feel worse. On the night our kids were born, they would have one dad—and one visitor. It might only be a matter of procedure, but one of us would start off as a second-class father.

Things only got worse when Ann showed me the patient recovery rooms, where new moms would enjoy precious bonding time with their infants.

“Great,” I said. “Ideally, we’d like our room to be in the same wing as Tiffany’s, but not right next door, so she doesn’t have to hear our kids crying or anything. She’ll probably want to get some sleep.”

Ann gave me that look again. “You want two rooms?”

“Well, of course. Tiffany needs a room to recover.”

“Tiffany will have a room. That’s what Labor and Delivery is for—recovering mothers.”

“Right, but she’s not the mother.”

“For our purposes, your surrogate is the mother.”

“So Drew and I can’t have a room?”

“I assure you, it’s just an issue of space. One baby, one room.”

“But we’re having two babies.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not suggesting you throw a pregnant lady out on the street, but my partner and I would like an opportunity to bond with our kids when they’re born.”

“And you’ll have that. You’ll be able to visit them in the nursery.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’ll have wristbands.”

I could see the logic from both sides. Ann had a hospital to run, and rooms were for people who needed medical attention. Then there was my side of the argument, which was that it broke my heart to think of spending our children’s first night on Earth in a motel down the street. After all we’d been through, hadn’t we earned the right to be awoken every fifteen minutes by our crying twins? Wasn’t that one of the reasons we chose surrogacy in the first place, because we wanted to be present for all our kids’ crucial moments, such as their first pee, poop, and late-night feeding?

Finally, I understood the point of the hospital tour. It wasn’t so I could check out the hospital. It was so they could check me out. This was very possibly their first-ever surrogate birth, and they were in no way prepared for us. I thought back to our first conversation with Wes, when he called us pioneers. In twenty-first-century America, this was what being a pioneer meant. It meant dealing with a world that has no procedures in place for a family like yours, that has yet to understand and respect your situation, where no one has yet fought for and won your equal rights.

I knew Rainbow Extensions would be no help. If Drew and I wanted what we felt we deserved, we were going to have to win it for it ourselves—and fast.

At exactly thirty-five weeks, or roughly around when Drew saw the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romcom
The Proposal
for the second time in theaters, Dr. Robertson called an official end to Tiffany’s bed rest. She was allowed to stop taking the medication that suppressed her contractions and could roam around her own home freely. If she went into labor, no one would try to stop it. That meant two things for Drew and me: one, that we could be dads any day, and two, that Susie was now relieved of her Tiffany-minding duties. We headed down to the Irelands’ house to pick her up. Drew was ecstatic his little sister would be staying with us for the remainder of the pregnancy. Not only could she help us decorate the nursery, but he was dying to have someone new to see
The Proposal
with.

What none of us expected is that we’d have to fight to get Susie back. As we lugged her suitcase to the front door, Gavin came screaming across the house. “NOOOOOOOOO!”

He lunged for her bag and held on with all his might. “Susie, stay!” he demanded.

Drew got down to reason with him. “Aw, Gavin. It’s okay. Mommy can take care of you again. We need Susie to come with us.”

“Nope!” Gavin yelled. “Sorry!” He refused to budge, his tiny hands clawing the canvas of Susie’s luggage.

None of us had realized until that moment how attached Gavin had grown to Susie. I looked at Susie to see if she had any ideas of how to calm him down, but she was hiding her face. Crying. The separation, it seemed, was hitting her just as hard.

“Just go,” Tiffany urged. She crouched down on Gavin’s level and pried his hands from the bag. “Trust me.”

So we did, hurrying out the door to the sounds of a little boy sobbing and his mommy trying to comfort him.

By Tiffany’s next doctor’s appointment, she was fully embracing her newfound freedom. I’d never heard anyone so excited to describe a trip to the supermarket or Quizno’s. Emboldened, she was setting her sights even higher. “Does this mean I can . . . go?” she asked Dr. Robertson.

We all knew where she meant. This had been the longest period of Disneyland withdrawal of Tiffany’s adult life.

“I’d wait another week before you do that,” the doctor said.

Five days later, Tiffany drove to Anaheim, advising us to wait by the phone. It was time to realize her dream of giving birth in Mickey’s homeland. She could practically taste the golden lifetime passes Sutton and Bennett would be granted, the early welcome they’d receive into the realm of Disney elite.

The irony of bed rest ending was that it did nothing to speed the delivery along. Now off her anticontraction medication, Tiffany was actually having fewer contractions. Even a day spent waddling across Tomorrowland did nothing to jolt her uterus into action. All it did was exhaust her so much that she spent the next day mostly in bed, though at least this time it was by choice.

It was disappointing to me, too, because if nothing else, a Disneyland birth would have meant not having to deal with Ann and her procedures. Surely, Drew and I would have full visitation over Bennett and Sutton if they arrived on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Would Cinderella kick us out of her castle the night our kids were born? I think not.

It was a fun dream, but it wasn’t going to happen, not for us. Damn it, our kids would be born in a hospital after all.

At thirty-seven weeks, Dr. Robertson brought up a previously unthinkable idea, that we might actually have to induce labor. Drew and I waved off the notion. We would have preferred to leave the kids in as long as possible, both for their sake and so we could squeeze in a screening of
Inglourious Basterds
before they were born. At the first mention of the word “induction,” though, Tiffany was ready to check into the hospital. “Can we do it today?” she asked.

We settled for an appointment at the thirty-eight-week mark. That was generally considered full-term for twins, and seven more days was about all Tiffany felt she could last.

The day before Tiffany’s induction, Drew’s mother flew out from Rochester for the second time in three months. Together with her and Susie, we checked into a motel five minutes from the hospital.

It was here that Drew and I would spend our last night of childlessness, within ten feet of an ice bucket and eighty of the Riverside freeway. We’d probably be up all night, or so I thought, until Drew pulled out a Xanax a friend had given him. It was supposed to help him sleep. Instead, the thought of taking a nonprescribed medication was just adding to his anxiety. “I don’t know how I’ll react to it! What if I can’t wake up tomorrow morning?”

He rolled the little pink pill over and over in his palm. “Do you want half?”

“No way. I’m not taking pills I don’t have a prescription for! Besides, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble falling asleep. I’m exhausted.”

ZzzzzzzsnAAAAAAARRRRFFFF! ZzzzzzzsnAAAAAAARRRRFFFF!

Twenty minutes later, it was Drew’s snoring that was keeping me awake, along with a surge of anxiety. It didn’t seem fair, so I jabbed him in the ribs.

Zzzz—“HUH?”

“Hey,” I whispered gently. “You up?”

Drew growled. He had decided not to take the pill, but he was still in too deep a slumber to respond.

“Drew! Drew!” Yes, I felt like a jerk for waking him, but this was a mental health emergency. I was officially freaking out.

“Oh my God,” Drew grumbled. “It’s happened.”

“What’s happened?”

“You’ve become the crazy one.”

“I’m not crazy. I’m just worried.”

“Why?”

I looked around the room. “I’m scared of spending our kids’ birthday in this motel.”

“That’s it?” Drew laughed.

“Yeah. What? Don’t you care?”

“Dude,” Drew said. He only called people “dude” when he was at his most relaxed and confident. “I’ve got it covered.”

Then he rolled over, and a few seconds later, he was snoring again.