first encounters: part two

I was once standing on a beach near Cancun with my sister when we felt a tickling under our feet. Tiny turtles were suddenly hatching beneath us. Hundreds of them. They’d pop out from under the sand, look around, then immediately turn toward the ocean twenty yards away and march.

I get that the sea makes a sound or maybe the light flashing on the water catches the attention of the turtles. But Baby G, eyes shut—how could he possibly know the direction toward my nipple?

We’re sprawled on the sofa in the delivery room, five feet from my surrogate, Alicia, who lies shivering in her husband John’s arms after 25 hours of pre-eclampsia’d labor. I’m wearing a hospital gown, backwards, the way a nursing mom would. It’s too small on me. An amused attendant had squeezed me into it moments before the birth (then snapped a photo of me for a staff newsletter. This single dad surrogacy thing was a first for the hospital.)

“Really, little buddy,” I say to Baby G, stroking the three curly wisps glued to the top of his scalp. He squeezes open his eyelids and looks up toward the sound. Our eyes meet for the first time.

His expression is nothing short of What the fuck?

“It’s ok,” I say, “I don’t have the boobs but….” I draw a blank. What do I have to offer?

His eyes are locked onto mine. Dark blue rings peering through narrow slits. How cute, he has my frown lines. He already looks old and worried.

I’m taking it all in, trying to connect this little guy to the blastocyst I first met on the tip of a catheter, to the Taricha newt in the ultrasound images, to the afternoon in the little dark room at the clinic where I conceived him to the moans of a stranger on a computer screen. This little velvety being with perfectly formed ear lobes.

Here we are. After nearly four years of false starts and wrong turns and failed embryo transfers and 4 a.m.anxiety attacks. After pouring thousands of dollars into a seemingly endless vortex. After giving up three times.

Here we are.

I think of the doctors, embryologists, agency staff, lab workers. The anonymous egg donor. The huge-hearted couple, my surrogate and her husband, hugging on the sweat-soaked sheets across from me. The friends, family, and confidants who kept me going, now gripping their phones waiting for news and photos.

I think of Baby G’s welcoming crew, clustered excitedly in the hallway beyond the door—my lifelong friends, my sister, my brother—all of whom dropped everything and travelled for miles to join Baby G for his first breaths.

I think of how only one in a thousand turtles survives after reaching the water.

“…You’ll be okay, Baby G.” And I place a bottle to his lips.