Hey guys, welcome back. So, I came across this story the other day, and I’m not going to lie, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Like, fullon nailbiting, heart-racing stuff. You’re going to want to hear this one. I was my sister’s surrogate. You don’t get to hold her anymore.

That’s what Leah said to me in her kitchen 3 days after I gave birth. I was standing there with a Tupperware container of frozen breast milk because she’d said she wanted to try supplementing. The baby was crying in the next room. My body achd. I still had stitches. And my sister looked at me like I was a stranger who’d wandered in off the street.

I said, “You don’t get to hold her anymore. It’s confusing for her. She’s 11 days old.” I said, “She doesn’t know who I am.” Exactly. Leah crossed her arms. And I want to keep it that way. The Tupperware was sweating in my hands. I’d pump that milk at 3:00 a.m. while crying because my breasts were so full.

They felt like they were going to split open because my body didn’t understand that the baby I’d carried for 9 months wasn’t coming home with me. I’d labeled each bag with the date and time like the lactation consultant told me. I’d driven 25 minutes with it in a cooler because Leah said formula was giving her gas. I’m not trying to confuse her.

I said I just I think you should go. The baby kept crying. I could hear her through the wall. That particular whale that meant she was hungry, not tired, not wet. I knew the difference already. I hated that I knew the difference. Leah, can we talk about this? I don’t understand what’s happening. There’s nothing to talk about. I’ll call you next week.

She didn’t call next week or the week after. When I finally drove over, her husband Garrett met me at the door and said they needed space. He had bags under his eyes and a spit- up stain on his shoulder and he couldn’t quite look at me. Space from what? I asked. Just space. Behind him, I could hear the baby fussing.

My milk let down right there on her front porch, soaking through my nursing pads and my shirt. I’d been pumping and dumping for 2 weeks by then, trying to dry up, but my body hadn’t gotten the message yet. Garrett saw the wet spot spreading across my chest. His face did something complicated.

“I’m sorry, Dana,” he said and closed the door. “I need to go back, I guess. I can’t tell this part right if you don’t know how we got here. My sister Leah is four years older than me. Growing up, we weren’t close. Not in the way people mean when they say that with inside jokes and sleepovers in each other’s rooms. She was the smart one.

I was the one who tried hard and came up short. She went to Northwestern, then Stanford for law school. I went to community college, transferred to a state school, dropped out after 2 years when I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. Our mom used to say Leah was going to change the world, and I was going to find my path eventually.

She said it kindly, but I knew what she meant. Leah got married at 29 to Garrett, who worked in finance and had the kind of easy confidence that comes from never really failing at anything. I was a bridesmaid. She didn’t ask me to be made of honor. That went to her law school roommate, a woman named Priya, who I’d met twice.

At the rehearsal dinner, I got too drunk on champagne and told a story about Leah peeing her pants in fourth grade during a spelling bee. Nobody laughed the way I thought they would. They started trying for a baby right away. Garrett wanted three kids. Leah wanted at least two. She went off birth control the week after the honeymoon. Nothing happened.

A year passed, then two. They did Clomid, then IUI. Leah started acupuncture. She cut out gluten and dairy and alcohol. Garrett got his sperm tested. Everything fine there. They moved on to IVF. This is the part I didn’t know until later. It worked twice. Both times Leah miscarried before 12 weeks. The second time she was alone in a hotel bathroom in Phoenix during a work conference.

She called me from the bathroom floor, sobbing so hard I could barely understand her. That was the first time she’d called me for anything real in maybe 10 years. I can’t do this again, she kept saying. I can’t. I drove down from where I was living then, a studio apartment in Sycamore, about 40 minutes from their place in Neapville, and stayed with her for a week while Garrett was traveling for work.

We watched selling sunset and ordered Thai food and she cried a lot and I didn’t know what to say. So mostly I just sat there on the last night. She looked at me and said, “I think my body is broken. It’s not broken. It can’t hold on to anything. Three rounds of IVF and nothing. Do you know how much that costs? Do you know what I’ve put into this?” I didn’t really not the full picture, but I knew she was 36 and that her doctor had said her egg quality was declining and that Garrett’s parents kept asking when they were going to have

grandchildren and that every time we went to our cousins kids’ birthday parties, Leah excused herself to cry in the bathroom. What about a surrogate? I asked. I don’t know why I said it. It just came out. Leah stared at me. We’ve talked about it, but you know how much that costs.

Between the agency fees and the legal stuff and paying the surrogate, it’s like $100,000. And that’s not even counting the IVF. What if you didn’t use an agency? What do you mean? I don’t remember exactly how I said it. I’ve replayed this conversation a thousand times and I still can’t remember the exact words, but I know I offered.

I know I said something like, “I could do it. I could carry a baby for you.” Leah’s face did about six things at once. Shock, then hope, then something that looked almost like hunger. Then she shook her head. I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’re not asking. I’m offering. Dana, you don’t You’ve never even been pregnant before. You don’t know what you’re signing up for, so I’ll figure it out.

She was quiet for a long time. On the TV, Cricelle was having a breakdown about her divorce. We’d muted it, but not turned it off, so she was just silently crying in the corner of the screen. “Let me talk to Garrett,” Leah finally said. “Here’s something I never told her. I wanted to be pregnant. I’d wanted it for years.

” “In that vague, embarrassing way you want things you think you’ll never have.” I was 32 and single and my last serious relationship had ended 2 years before when my boyfriend moved to Seattle for a job and didn’t ask me to come. My periods were getting heavier and more painful and my doctor had mentioned something about endometriosis and suggested I might want to think about my fertility timeline.

Like it was a project plan I was falling behind on. So when I offered to carry Leah’s baby, there was something in it for me, too. I’m not going to pretend there wasn’t. I got to be pregnant without having to figure out how to be a mother, without having to have a partner or explain to my parents that I was doing it alone.

I got to feel what it was like for something to grow inside me. I got to matter. That’s the part that sounds ugly when I say it out loud, but it’s true. The plan was straightforward at first. Leah had frozen embryos from her last IVF cycle, three of them. They’d do a transfer. I’d carry the baby, and at the end, the baby would go home with Leah and Garrett.

We hired a lawyer who specialized in surrogacy agreements. We had a notorized contract. We did everything right except except that when they thawed the embryos, none of them survived. The embryologist called with the news and Leah collapsed on her kitchen floor. I was there when it happened. I watched her curl into a ball and scream into the tile.

Garrett flew home early from a business trip. I stayed at their house for 3 days while Leah barely got out of bed. On the third day, she came downstairs looking hollow and said, “There might be another option.” Okay, it’s a lot to ask. Okay, we could use your eggs. I didn’t say anything. You’re four years younger than me. Your eggs are probably better.

And we already know your body can carry I mean, we’re assuming she was talking fast the way she does when she’s nervous. We’d still use Garrett’s sperm. The baby would be biologically related to both of us to our family, and you’d still just be the carrier, the surrogate. It’s the same arrangement legally.

We just have to update the contract. Leah, I know it’s a lot. I know, but I don’t know what else to do. We can’t afford to buy donor eggs and pay for another surrogate. And this way, I mean, you already offered. Let me think about it, I said. I thought about it for 3 days. I talked to my mom who said it was my decision, but she was worried about me.

I talked to my friend Key who said I was crazy and asked if I was secretly in love with Garrett. I wasn’t. I’m not. Key always goes to the most dramatic explanation first. I thought about what it would mean to have a child in the world who was biologically mine, but not legally mine. A child I would see at holidays and birthdays and call my niece or nephew.

A child who might look like me, might have my eyes or my weird crooked pinky fingers or my tendency to sneeze in bright light. I thought about Leah on the kitchen floor screaming. I said yes. The egg retrieval was brutal. 12 days of injections, my belly bruised and swollen, hot flashes and mood swings, and one night where I cried for an hour because I dropped a fork.

They got 14 eggs. 11 were mature, eight fertilized, five made it to day five. They transferred two. 3 weeks later, I was pregnant. I found out alone in the bathroom of my apartment, staring at two pink lines that appeared before the test had even finished processing. I was supposed to wait for the bl00d test results, but I couldn’t.

I peed on the stick at 5:00 a.m. because I couldn’t sleep, and I just knew. For about 10 minutes, I let myself pretend it was mine. That’s the thing I’ve never told anyone. 10 minutes of looking at that test and feeling something I can only describe as complete, like a door I’d been walking past my whole life had finally opened.

Then I texted Leah a picture of the test. She called me screaming with joy. The pregnancy was hard. I had morning sickness until week 20. I had sciatica so bad I couldn’t walk some days. My bl00d pressure kept creeping up and I had to go to extra appointments for monitoring. I gained 52 lbs and my feet went up a whole shoe size and my belly button popped out in a way that made me want to cry every time I saw it.

But there was also this feeling her move for the first time. It was in the cereal aisle at Target. I was buying Honey Nut Cheerios, the family-sized box, and I felt this flutter like bubbles or butterflies. I stood there with my hand on my stomach and this woman walked past me and said, “First kick.” And I nodded and she smiled and said, “Best feeling in the world.” I called Leah from the car.

She cried. She asked me to describe it in detail over and over and I could hear how hungry she was for it, how much she wanted to be the one feeling it. “I wish you could feel this,” I said. “Me too.” After that, she started coming to every appointment. She was there for every ultrasound, every heartbeat check.

She bought a home Doppler so we could listen to the heartbeat whenever we wanted. She talked to my belly every time she saw me. She made lists of names, procon lists with weighted criteria and everything because that’s who Leah is. She picked Audrey. Audrey Grace. I thought it was pretty but a little old-fashioned.

I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my baby. That’s what I kept telling myself. It wasn’t my baby. There was this one afternoon, I think I was around 7 months, when Leah and I went to Bye-Bye Baby to finish her registry. We’d already done most of it online, but she wanted to see some things in person. We were looking at strollers and she was testing out this upper baby one, pushing it back and forth with that serious expression she gets when she’s evaluating something.

A saleswoman came over and asked if we needed help. “We’re good,” Leah said, still pushing the stroller. The woman looked at me at my giant belly and smiled. “When are you due?” “Early April,” I said. “First baby.” Opened my mouth to explain to say it was my sister’s baby. I was just the surrogate. And Leah cut in. “Yes,” she said.

“First baby.” The woman started talking about car seats and Leah was nodding along and I just stood there, first baby, like she’d already erased me from the equation. I didn’t say anything. I told myself it was easier to let strangers assume. I told myself it didn’t matter. But I thought about it on the drive home.

And that night, alone in my apartment, feeling Audrey kick against my ribs, I let myself think the thought I’d been pushing away for months. What if I made a mistake? I went into labor on April 3rd, 3 days early, my water broke at midnight while I was watching a documentary about the Menendez brothers. I remember lying there feeling the warm gush and thinking, “Of course, right before I find out what the prosecutor says.” I called Leah first.

She answered on the first ring, even though it was the middle of the night, like she’d been sleeping with the phone in her hand. “It’s time,” I said. She screamed. I could hear Garrett in the background asking what was happening. Then she said they were on their way and hung up before I could say anything else. Labor was 17 hours.

I won’t describe all of it because honestly, some of it’s a blur now. I remember the epidural not working on my left side. I remember throwing up multiple times. I remember Leah holding my hand, then stepping back and taking pictures, then holding my hand again. I remember Garrett standing in the corner looking like he might faint.

At 5:47 p.m., Audrey Grace was born. They put her on my chest. That’s standard, the nurse said. Skin-to-skin for the first few minutes, even with surrogacy. Good for the baby’s heart rate and temperature. She was so small, 6 lb 11 o, a full head of dark hair. She was screaming and then she wasn’t. And she looked up at me with these unfocused newborn eyes. And I understood.

I understood in a way I hadn’t let myself understand before that I had made a terrible mistake. I loved her, not like a niece, not like a surrogate, like a mother. Okay, the nurse said gently, “Let’s get her to mom. She meant Leah.” She took Audrey from my chest and put her on Leah’s, and I watched my sister hold my daughter for the first time, and something inside me broke.

They had a photographer at the hospital, some kind of newborn photography service that comes around to all the new parents. Leah had signed up for it weeks ago. The photographer came to the room while I was still hooked up to IVs and monitors, still bleeding and shaking and processing what had just happened. She looked at me, looked at Leah holding the baby, and said, “Okay, let’s get some family shots. I’ll step out.

” I said, “No, you should be in them.” Leah said, “You’re her aunt.” Aunt. The word h!t like a slap. I need to rest. I said, “Go ahead.” I watched them pose for pictures. A perfect little family unit. The photographer kept saying things like, “Gorgeous and beautiful, and she’s going to be a heartbreaker.

” At one point she asked if they wanted a shot with grandma and gestured toward me. That’s my sister, Leah said. The surrogate. Oh, the photographers’s face did a thing I couldn’t read. That’s so generous of you. She’s amazing, Leah said, looking at me with something like gratitude. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay her. I think about that a lot now.

I don’t know how I’ll ever repay her. Like it was a debt she owed. Like we were keeping score. The first week was hard. I went home from the hospital alone. Leah and Garrett and Audrey went to their house in Neapville. I went back to my studio apartment where everything was exactly as I’d left it.

The unwashed dishes, the documentary still paused on my TV. The nursing bras I’d bought optimistically hanging in my closet. My mom came to stay with me for a few days. She kept giving me these worried looks and making me soup and asking if I wanted to talk about it. Talk about what? How you’re feeling? I’m fine. Dana, I’m fine, Mom.

I knew what I was signing up for, but I wasn’t fine. I couldn’t stop thinking about Audrey. I’d pump milk. Leah had asked me to pump for the first few weeks, just until her supply of donor milk came in. And I’d sit there at 3:00 a.m. with the machine humming, and I’d cry. Not cute crying, but the ugly snot everywhere kind.

My body thought my baby had d!ed. That’s what my mom finally said, trying to explain the hormones to me. Your body doesn’t know she’s okay. Your body thinks something terrible happened. Something terrible did happen, I wanted to say. But I didn’t because I’d done it to myself. I went to see Audrey every few days at first.

Leah seemed happy to have me there, at least in the beginning. We’d pass her back and forth. I’d hold her while Leah napped. I’d change diapers and warm bottles and do all the things that felt like they should have been mine to do. But there were also these moments, small things. One time I was feeding Audrey and I started humming just a song I’d been singing to her in the womb, something by Fleetwood Mac.

And Leah said, “Oh, we’re trying to play more classical music. Studies show it’s better for brain development.” and she turned on a Mozart playlist and I stopped humming. Another time I suggested we try a different swaddle technique because Audrey kept breaking out of hers. Leah said she’d read all the books and was doing it the way the experts recommended.

I said, “Okay.” Audrey broke out of that swaddle 20 minutes later. Little things, stupid things. I told myself I was being sensitive. I told myself this was normal, that new moms are protective, that I needed to back off and let Leah find her rhythm. Then came the kitchen conversation, the Tupperware. You don’t get to hold her anymore.

I tried calling. I tried texting. I drove over twice more and both times no one answered the door even though I could see Leah’s car in the driveway. Finally, I texted. Can we please talk about what’s happening? I don’t understand what I did wrong. 3 days later, she responded. We’re pursuing legal action. Please don’t contact us again.

All communication should go through our attorney. I called my mom hysterical. She didn’t believe me at first. There must be some misunderstanding. She kept saying, “Leah wouldn’t do this. Let me call her. She called. Leah didn’t pick up. My mom left three voicemails over the next week. No response. A certified letter arrived at my apartment eight days later.

It was from a law firm in Chicago. It said that Leah and Garrett were seeking to enforce the surrogacy agreement and to ensure that I had no parental rights to the child. It said they were also considering a civil suit for emotional distress and breach of contract. There was a paragraph, I remember it exactly because I read it so many times the paper started to wear through.

That said, I had demonstrated concerning attachment behaviors inconsistent with a gestational carrier relationship leading to significant emotional harm to the intended parents. I didn’t know what that meant. I still don’t know really. Concerning attachment behaviors, was it because I cried when I held her? Because I called too often? Because I hummed Fleetwood Mac? I hired a lawyer.

I couldn’t really afford one, but my mom helped me pay for it. Her name was Janet Okonquo and she had a small practice in Weaten. And when I told her my story, she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes and said, “This is complicated. How is it complicated? She’s my biological daughter. I gave birth to her. You signed a surrogacy agreement.

You acknowledged that the intended parents would have full parental rights. You accepted compensation. I accepted $5,000 for expenses. I didn’t sell my baby. The agreement says otherwise.” She pulled out my contract, the one I’d signed without really reading because Leah had assured me it was standard language.

Everyone signs them. Don’t worry about it. It says you agree that any child born as a result of this agreement is the legal child of the intended parents. It says you wave all parental rights. It says I know what it says. Then you know we’re fighting uphill. I went home that night and didn’t eat dinner.

I sat on my couch and stared at the wall and at some point I realized 4 hours had passed. My phone buzzed. A text from Key. Hey, want to get drinks this weekend? Haven’t seen you in forever. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t figure out how to explain what was happening in a text message. I still haven’t explained it to her.

Actually, I keep meaning to and then I don’t. Janet said, “Our best argument was genetic parentage.” In Illinois, the person who gives birth is considered the legal mother unless there’s a valid gestational surrogacy agreement. But gestational surrogacy usually involves the intended mother’s eggs, not the surrogates.

When the surrogate provides the eggs, it gets murky. So, I have a case. You have an argument. Whether it’s a winning argument, she shrugged. Courts generally want to uphold these agreements. They want to protect intended parents who’ve invested in the process. and Leah and Garrett have resources, good lawyers. They can drag this out longer than you can afford.

What are you saying? I’m saying you need to think about what outcome you actually want. Full custody, shared custody, visitation rights, because we might not get everything, and you need to know what you’re willing to settle for. I thought about it for a long time. What did I want? I wanted to watch Audrey grow up.

I wanted to be there for her first steps and her first words and her first day of school. I wanted her to know me, really know me, not as some distant aunt she saw twice a year at holidays. But I also knew what a custody battle would do to Audrey, to my relationship with Leah, whatever was left of it. To our whole family, visitation.

I finally said, “I want guaranteed visitation rights, regular contact, and I want Audrey to know the truth eventually that I’m her biological mother.” Janet nodded. Okay, we can work with that. Leah’s lawyer sent a counter proposal. No visitation, no contact, and I would sign an agreement never to tell Audrey about my genetic connection.

In exchange, they would drop the emotional distress lawsuit. I said no. They sent another proposal, supervised visitation once a month, and I would not disclose my genetic relationship until Audrey turned 18. If I broke this condition, all visitation would be terminated. I said no again. Janet warned me I was running out of money.

She said Leah’s side was trying to bleed me dry. Make me give up. She said it was working. I can’t give up. I said she’s my daughter. She’s also their daughter legally and practically she’s been living with them her whole life. She’s 3 months old. She doesn’t know you. She’ll know me if I have anything to say about it.

The hearing was in June. A family court in DuPage County. Woodpaneled walls, fluorescent lights that made everyone look slightly ill. Leah and Garrett sat on one side with their expensive lawyers. I sat on the other with Janet. I hadn’t seen Leah in person since the day she told me to leave. She looked thinner, tired. She didn’t look at me.

The judge was an older woman with gray hair and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She spent a long time reviewing the documents, the surrogacy agreement, the egg donor agreement, the text messages. Leah’s lawyers had subpoenaed my phone, and they’d pulled everything. Every text I’d sent about missing Audrey.

Every time I’d asked to see her, they were trying to make me look obsessive, unhinged. Janet argued that traditional surrogacy, where the surrogate provides the egg, wasn’t covered by Illinois’s gestational surrogacy act. She argued that I was the genetic mother and deserved parental rights. She cited cases from other states, talked about the best interests of the child, pointed out that I’d never been found unfit in any way.

Leah’s lawyers argued that I’d signed a valid contract, that I’d known what I was agreeing to, that allowing me to claim parental rights now would undermine surrogacy arrangements across the state, discourage intended parents from pursuing this path to parenthood. The judge asked questions, lots of questions.

At one point, she asked me directly why I’d agreed to use my own eggs. Because my sister’s embryos didn’t survive, I said. Because she’d already been through so much. Because I thought I was helping. And you didn’t anticipate that you might feel attached after using your own genetic material. No, I mean, I thought I could handle it.

I thought it would be different. Different how? I don’t know. I just thought I felt myself starting to cry. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I thought I was doing a good thing. I didn’t know it would feel like this. The judge looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at Leah, who was staring straight ahead, not moving.

I’m going to take this under adisement. The judge said, “I’ll issue a ruling within 30 days.” I waited. I went to work. I hadn’t mentioned that, I guess. I worked at a property management company handling tenant complaints and scheduling repairs. It wasn’t interesting work, but it kept me busy. My coworker, Ellen, who sat in the cubicle next to mine, kept asking if I was okay. You seem distracted, she said.

I’m fine. Is it about the baby? I saw on Facebook that your sister had a baby. It’s complicated. She nodded and didn’t push. I liked Ellen. She had a collection of tiny succulents on her desk that she watered with a spray bottle shaped like a dinosaur. The ruling came on day 28. The judge found that the surrogacy agreement was valid.

She found that I had knowingly and voluntarily waved my parental rights. She found that Leah and Garrett were Audrey’s legal parents and that my genetic connection did not override the contract I’d signed. However, however, she noted the unusual circumstances of the case, the last minute egg donor arrangement, my obvious emotional distress, the lack of independent legal counsel for me when the contract was modified.

She found that denying me all contact would be unduly punitive given my biological relationship to the child. her order. Leah and Garrett were granted full legal and physical custody. I was granted visitation rights, one visit per month, supervised at a location of the custodial parents choosing. The genetic relationship was to remain confidential until Audrey reached the age of 18, at which point she could be told the truth if she wished.

It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was something. Here’s where it gets worse. Leah didn’t comply with the order. The first scheduled visitation, she canled. Said Audrey was sick. The second time, she said she had a work conflict. The third time, she just didn’t show up. I went back to court. Janet filed a motion for contempt. Leah’s lawyers argued that she was making good faith efforts to accommodate visitation, but that my continued hostility and obsessive behavior was making it unsafe.

They had evidence, screenshots of texts I’d sent when she kept cancelling. I wasn’t proud of some of them. I’d called her a selfish in one. I’d said she was keeping Audrey hostage. I’d said things I meant in the moment and regretted immediately after. The judge looked at the screenshots. She looked at me.

Miss Hartwell, you have a right to be frustrated, but these communications are not helping your case. I know. I’m sorry. I was just I’m modifying my order. Visitation will be suspended until you complete an anger management course. After that, we’ll reassess. I stared at her. Anger management like I was the problem. Like Leah hadn’t broken the court order three times in a row. But I did it.

Eight weeks of anger management classes in a community center that smelled like floor wax and burned coffee. Eight weeks of sitting in a circle with people who’d thrown things at their spouses and screamed at their kids in parking lots. I was the quietest person there. The instructor, a guy named Marcus with a ponytail and a lot of opinions about emotional regulation, kept encouraging me to share more.

I’m working through it, I’d say. And then I’d sit there silently while a man named Carl talked about the time he punched a hole in his drywall. I finished the course, got my certificate, went back to court. The judge reinstated visitation. Once a month, supervised. Leah would be required to cooperate. The first real visit was in November.

Audrey was almost eight months old by then. We met at a park district building in Elmherst, a beige room with plastic chairs and a box of toys in the corner. A social worker named Tammy was there to supervise. Leah brought Audrey in a stroller. She didn’t say anything to me, just unstrapped Audrey and sat down in a chair across the room.

I looked at my daughter for the first time in months. She was so big, so different from the newborn I’d held in the hospital. She had two tiny teeth coming in on the bottom. Her dark hair had lightened to brown. She was wearing a onesie with a giraffe on it. “Hi, Audrey,” I said. She looked at me, didn’t smile, didn’t cry, just looked.

“Can I hold her?” I asked Tammy. “That’s up to mom.” We both looked at Leah. She hesitated, then nodded. “Fine.” Tammy brought Audrey over and put her in my arms. She was heavier than I expected. She squirmed a little, then settled. I didn’t hum. I didn’t cry. I didn’t do any of the things I’d imagined doing during all those months I’d been fighting to see her.

I just held her and looked at her and tried to memorize her face. “You’ve gotten so big,” I said. Audrey grabbed my finger, squeezed it hard. Something cracked open in my chest. Those visits continued once a month like clockwork. Audrey got older. She started crawling, then walking. She said her first words, “Mama, dada, no.” She never called me anything.

I was just a lady she saw sometimes in a beige room. I kept showing up. I brought her toys, a stuffed elephant, a board book about colors, a little wooden train, and Leah let her keep them mostly. I learned what she liked. Being tossed gently in the air, clapping games, the song from Moana. I learned what she didn’t like.

Loud noises. Being told no, the color orange for some reason. But I also watched her call Leah mama. I watched her reach for Leah when she was tired, nuzzle into Leah’s neck, fall asleep in Leah’s arms. I watched the family I might have had if I’d made different choices. My mom came to a few visits. She’d started speaking to Leah again.

Awkward, stilted phone calls where they both pretended nothing had happened. She told me Leah was in therapy, told me Garrett’s parents were helping with child care, told me things I didn’t ask for and didn’t want to know. She’s not a monster, my mom said once after a visit. She was scared.

She thought you were going to take her baby away. I wasn’t going to take her baby away. I just wanted to be in her life. But Leah didn’t know that. She just saw you looking at Audrey the way you looked at her and she panicked the way I looked at her like she was yours, like you had a claim. I didn’t know what to say to that. I still don’t.

Last March, Audrey turned two. Leah invited me to the birthday party. I almost said no. I thought it might be a trap, some new way to hurt me, but I went anyway to their house in Neighborville, the house I hadn’t been inside since that day with the Tupperware. It was a small party. Some neighbors, a few mom friends Leah had met through a playgroup. my mom.

Garrett’s parents. Audrey was wearing a tutu and a crown that kept slipping down over her eyes. There were pink balloons everywhere. Leah found me in the kitchen refilling my cup of lemonade. Hey, she said. Hey. We stood there for a moment. I could hear Audrey shrieking with laughter in the other room.

Someone making exaggerated monster noises. Thank you for coming, Leah said. Of course. I know it’s been I know. She stopped, took a breath. I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything. I was scared when she was born and you looked at her and I could see how much you loved her. I was so scared you were going to try to keep her.

I know that doesn’t make sense. I know you never said anything like that, but I’d wanted her for so long and I’d lost so many and I just You tried to erase me. I said you tried to make it like I never existed. I know. Her voice cracked. I was wrong. I was so wrong and I’m sorry and I don’t know how to fix it.

We stood there in her kitchen. Two sisters who used to not be close and then were close for a brief strange moment and then weren’t anything at all. I don’t know how to fix it either, I said. Can we try? I don’t know what it looks like, but can we try? I thought about all the months of court hearings and canceled visits and anger management and sitting in beige rooms with a social worker watching my every move.

I thought about the texts I’d sent calling her a selfish I thought about the way she’d said first baby to that saleswoman. I also thought about Audrey, about the stuffed elephant, about the way she’d squeezed my finger. Okay, I said we can try. I wish I could tell you it’s fixed now. that Leah and I are close again. That I see Audrey every week.

That we’ve become one big happy blended family. It’s not like that. The supervised visits ended last summer. Now I see Audrey every other weekend unsupervised. I take her to the zoo and the aquarium and the park by my apartment. She calls me Auntie Dana. She knows I’m special somehow. That I’m different from her other aunts, but she doesn’t know why yet. She’s almost three now.

She has my crooked pinky fingers. She sneezes when she looks at the sun, just like me. Leah and I talk. Not often, not about anything deep. We coordinate schedules and swap photos and occasionally have stilted conversations at family gatherings. I haven’t forgiven her. I don’t think she’s forgiven herself either.

Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I’d never offered if I’d let Leah figure it out on her own. Maybe she would have found another surrogate. Maybe she would have adopted. Maybe she would have made peace with not being a mother. Maybe I’d be the cool single aunt who shows up at Christmas with good presents and no baggage.

Or maybe I would have spent the rest of my life wondering what it felt like to carry a child. To feel her kick inside me, to hold her while she’s still slippery and new and look into her eyes for the first time. I don’t know which life would have been better. I only know the one I have. Last week, I was at Audrey’s preschool for a parent observation day. Leah invited me.

She invites me to things now. Sometimes I watched Audrey play with blocks. She was building a tower, stacking them carefully, one on top of the other. When it fell, she didn’t cry. She just looked at it for a moment and started again. The teacher came over to me. You must be so proud, she said.

She’s such a smart girl. Thank you, I said. She looks just like you. Same eyes. I didn’t correct her. I just smiled and said, she does, doesn’t she? Across the room, Audrey finished her tower, six blocks high. She looked around for someone to show it to, and her eyes found mine. Auntie Dana, she shouted. Look, I looked.