One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (7 page)

“Insemination expenses aren’t normally covered in a coparenting agreement. It has more to do with visitation rights and financial responsibilities once the baby’s born.”

“Are there three-parent agreements?” I asked.

“I know of one or two.” She gave me the name of the lawyer who had drawn them up.

“All right.” Liz was forging on. “Shall we go over insemination?” We nodded. “You’ve been taking your body temperature? Have you tried the ovulation predictor kit?” We had. “And have you been watching your cervical mucus?”
Gross. Do I have to?

“You want egg-white consistency, clear and stretchy. You can record the amount and quality right on your temperature chart.”

Liz unzipped the bag and set a woman’s midsection on the table. She turned her upside down and looked to make sure everything was in order. Then she picked up the speculum. Lorene was laughing at me. “You’re pink,” she said.

“Don’t make me red.” I was nervous, not embarrassed.

Liz inserted the speculum. “The cervix feels kind of hard, like the tip of your nose.”
With egg white on it.
She turned the midriff toward us. “Do you need a speculum?”

“I still have the one we got in the support group,” I said.

“Now, you want Steve to abstain for two days before you inseminate. No lubricants other than corn oil.
A tall clean glass container works fine for collection.” She picked up the syringe. “You take up a little air first—the air helps you get every last bit, and then when your syringe is full, you insert it.” She positioned the syringe inside the speculum, which was inside the midriff’s hooey. “And that’s all there is to it. You can prop Suzy’s hips up on some pillows, stay that way for twenty minutes or so.” She looked to see if we had any questions.

“I still need to have an HSP—”

“HSG.”

“What if one of my tubes is blocked? Do you know what the procedure is, how much time it takes to recover?”

“Cross that bridge when you come to it, and you only need one tube.” She smiled and pushed her chair back. “Keep me posted!” It was time for us to go.

The drive home was quiet for a bit, then Lorene blurted out, “If something happens to you, I want custody. I don’t want Steve raising our child. I’m the coparent.”

“Definitely. I’ll call the lawyer tomorrow.”

“Oh, God, what if something happens to you? There were times I wish I’d been a better mother to David; I’m lucky he turned out the way he did.”

“Everybody makes mistakes.” I was grateful for her experience. “Besides, nothing is going to happen to me.”

I spoke with the lawyer the next afternoon. She would be happy to draft something; however, she wanted to be up-front about the fact that none of these three-parent agreements had been court tested.

That night I e-mailed Steve the list of tests he’d need to take to screen into a sperm bank and mentioned the coparenting agreement. I wondered whether he could verbalize how much he wanted to be involved as a parent.

It’s all really happening, isn’t it? It’s almost impossible to know where to begin. I figure I’d take a chance and throw a grenade . . .

We’ve been concocting this wild scheme through e-mails, letters and dreams, and we haven’t seen each other for, I don’t know, ten years or something. I think we need to get together before we embark on this creative act. If we really want to do it, we need to talk about how it would work and all those thousand questions we both have.

If we go ahead, I’ll probably have to come to the States because that’s where your doctors are, which means the prelude get-together should be here. Your return trip to Australia—a week, or two—we could book a place in the country, near the sea. It’s winter, but it’s atmospheric.

There it is, the grenade in the pudding. I haven’t changed my mind, I’m not getting cold feet. But this is a pretty big thing we’re talking about here and for the sake of Junior, we need to really know what the hell we’re doing. What do you think?

Love, Steve XO

The “if we go ahead” landed with a thud in the pit of my stomach. The impossibilities of spending a week away swirled around on top. I was organizing and training for a 5-day, 500-mile bike-a-thon.
How could I do that with no bike, no phone, no Lorene, and who wants to go to Australia during Australian winter?
I called Lorene.

“You have to go.”

“I cannot possibly go. Ride FAR—”

“The week after the 50-mile training ride. Want me to look up flights?”

“I don’t want to go without you.”

“Of course you don’t. We have the rest of our lives—
the rest of our lives
—together. You’ve picked a thoughtful father for your child.”

Ride FAR
was the country’s first HIV/AIDS bike-a-thon. Every two years, 25 of us (and 10 land crew) rode 100 miles a day for five days. The ride raised over $1,100,000 for HIV/AIDS service organizations.

Ten days later, I was on a plane heading west. Lorene had draped her compass necklace over my neck at the airport; I held on to it, already missing her. The international dateline would swallow up Sunday, one less day I’d be away, as long as I didn’t count the extra Sunday I’d be socked with on the way back.

I slept for ten hours. When I woke up, I took my temperature and entered it into my chart. The pilot announced we were an hour outside of Melbourne. Time to zone in.
What was the zone exactly?
It isn’t a sales trip.
Oh, yes it is; I’m not going home without a father.
It is an open-ended preconception retreat.

Not recognizing Steve after ten years skittered across the realm of possibilities as I shuffled through the international-arrivals doors. Then I spotted him raising his cup of coffee, a newspaper folded under his other arm. His hair was a little shorter, more temple showing, but otherwise he looked exactly the same. We hugged, coffee, newspaper, and all. “You still a coffee snob?” he asked.

“Probably worse.”

“This one’s atrocious. We’ll drop your stuff and go straight to a little café in our neighborhood. It’s very good—well, you’ll tell me what you think.”