Dr. Adams smiled, shaking her head. “If you’d conceived naturally I suspect there’d be no issue,” she said. “And there might not be one at all. If this were a natural conception, I wouldn’t even be concerned. But we see this sometimes when we’re dealing with implantation. The surrogate’s body doesn’t produce the hormone quite as profusely as it might normally do. It’s just something we watch.”
She nodded. Feeling like she was going to cry anyway. She’d never even considered the fact that she might not be good enough to get this job done. This was what she had to give. She’d damn well get it right.
“The progesterone has no negative effect on the fetus,” Dr. Adams explained, “although in rare cases, if the baby’s a boy, he could have one of the most common birth defects we see. It has to do with his urethra placement, but even if that were to happen, it’s generally easily treated with no adverse effects.”
“And the side effects for Christine?”
“The injections themselves can be painful. There might be discomfort at the site. But otherwise there are no negative effects.”
“And if she needed the injections and didn’t have them?” Jamie asked.
Christine felt his glance on her, but couldn’t look at him. She really just wanted to get out of there. Get herself together. Hit some balls against the wall until she was her normal self.
“Then you risk her losing the baby.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she said. “Not if I can help it.”
She nodded. She’d already been given progesterone before the implantation. “So, are we done here?” she asked, looking from the doctor to Jamie. “Or, at least, done with me?”
The doctor nodded. Jamie stood.
And Christine got the hell out of there.
Chapter Fourteen
Jamie wasn’t all that surprised when he walked out into an empty waiting room. Christine wasn’t in the parking lot, either. Nor was her car.
Disappointment settled around his edges at a time when he should be flying to the moon. Or, at least, be fully focused on the family he was making. Feeling a bit bittersweet was understandable, probably even healthy, considering that his wife wasn’t there physically to share the experience with him.
Feeling let down because his surrogate wasn’t sharing the moment could not be healthy. He needed her to have her own life. Because he expected her to deliver the baby and hand it to him.
She’d been right to leave.
The reminder of who and what they were to one another had been a kindness.
He went to Mission Viejo, sat in his office on campus and met with a few students, individually, who were in town prior to classes starting and needed to discuss their academic futures with him. Thought about calling his mother and letting her know she was going to be a grandma, but wanted to wait until they’d surpassed the three-month mark. Between one in four and one in ten natural pregnancies, or 10 to 25 percent, resulted in miscarriage. And more than 80 percent of the lost pregnancies occurred within the first twelve weeks. Some authorities said those risks increased with implantation.
He’d done his reading.
And needed the stats to back up the material. He made sense of his world through numbers.
And, perhaps, numbers failed to consider key factors that could leave him with less than expected.
The thought shot through him as he was on the freeway home to Marie Cove. Emily had often teased him, laughed with him, about the spaces she filled up for him. Like their first dance at their wedding. He hadn’t given a single thought to a song he’d like for that dance. It just hadn’t factored in to his thoughts concerning that day.
He’d wanted to be married and be done.
He had wanted to celebrate. The wedding just hadn’t seemed like some humongous, life-changing moment to him but rather a continuation of a life that they’d already been living, another milestone on the road they’d been traveling since they were kids.
And then there was the time he’d been in a car accident and hadn’t called her right away. His vehicle was totaled, but he and everyone else involved, including the young kid at fault, were fine. She hadn’t laughed about that one. She’d been truly upset with him, telling him his calm was a wonderful asset most times, but there were moments that required more. She hadn’t been able to fill the gap in his emotional maturity for him that time. She’d fallen into it.
So was Christine Elliott doing the same? Had he pushed this whole baby thing, certain of his “life” calculations, without considering key factors? The things you couldn’t measure?
Like love? Sacrifice? Pain?
He’d asked a woman who spent her life caring for others and helping them have the families they wanted, to grow and protect his child, without considering the emotional ramifications to her. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself, but he should have taken Christine’s well-being into account...
And he hadn’t given nearly enough weight to the physical impact it would have on her. The energy it would take to carry around all the extra weight every second of every day. Weekly injections that would not only be uncomfortable to receive, but left discomfort in their trails. The birth.