Scenes from my Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making

Friends of ours – the best man at our wedding and his fiancé – were visiting from out of town and we planned to spend the day together followed by a night out on the town. I’d made an early morning run to the grocery store to pick up supplies for a picnic lunch and on my way to the deli, I passed by the feminine hygiene section.

Something caught my eye and I doubled back. On the bottom shelf were ovulation predictor kits. I was familiar with them of course, I’d taken countless tests at home to plan exactly when we should have sex in order to conceive, but I had never seen a positive result on any test I took.  I scoffed at myself for wishful thinking and getting distracted from the mission at hand of packing lunch.

But seemingly against my will and better judgment, I grabbed the blue box of kits, tossed it in my basket and finished shopping.

I drove home, packed lunches for four, and went upstairs to change into my bathing suit, taking the box of ovulation predictor kits upstairs with me. Not knowing why I was doing it after years of failure, I peed on the stick.

These sticks work just the same as home pregnancy tests – you hold them in the stream of your urine, soak the tip, and wait a few minutes for the result. Except this time, I had results almost instantly – the stick showed that I was ovulating. There were two very clear parallel blue lines right before me.

I gasped and look incredulously at the stick, wondering what was happening. My heart was pounding. I hadn’t ovulated in over six years and today was the day. Most of the house was already packed in boxes in preparation for our move, but our bed was still at the ready and would be getting some use today.

And then the doorbell rang. Our friends were here.