Issue 39: When things start to go right

Saturday March 09 2019

In the spirit of moving onwards and upwards, we already have a Skype call booked with Lydia, our (hopefully) new surrogate. This is essentially series two, episode one. Perhaps you need a first season recap; episode one is the Skype introduction in which you meet and greet via videolink and decide whether you fundamentally like each other enough or not. Episode two is the one with the medical. Will she pass? Will your heart finally give out from anticipatory palpitations? Episode three is The Contract. Shit’s about to get legal. And episode four? The Treatment Cycle. Houston, we have lift-off.

Series one ended much like the tenth Nasa Space Shuttle Challenger flight, breaking up 73 seconds after take-off. So here we are again, ready to repeat, extra-cautious this time and browbeaten to slumping point. The slump is real. We are almost horizontal, over our kitchen counter waiting for the Skype tone to let us know Lydia is online and . . . here we go again, again.

She’s immediately wonderful. This is not just wishful thinking, it’s true, because she’s sitting in her car at the side of the road, using her data to Skype from her phone. Why? “I was stuck in bad traffic and I didn’t want you to have to wait for me so I just pulled over. It’s fine.”

She has three children, so she has arranged for her mother to look after them while she makes the call — and she has even arranged to divert to her friend’s house, which is closer than home. All so we don’t have to spend an extra ten minutes in our perfectly comfortable kitchen waiting for her. I love her already. I have a benchmark set by series one, and she just knocked it out the park.

Needless to say we tell her not to worry and to go home. We can reschedule, but she is insistent. Ten minutes later we are talking again, this time from her friend’s house where we won’t be interrupted by tooting horns and bad signal.

The next half-hour or so is a blur — you know things are meant to be when you can’t pinpoint an exact moment of decision. Like you don’t decide your best friend is your best friend in a moment. Or why and when your vocation becomes your vocation. These things evolve as naturally as monkeys to men. I can’t even recount the chat too clearly because we click from the off, but the important things to note are how happy we feel about two minutes in, a huge feat when you’re as world-weary and nervous as we are.

We ask the important question. Why does she want to do this? It’s important, especially in commercial surrogacy, because you need to find out if money is the primary motivation.

Lydia has never been a surrogate, but when her best friend had stillborn twins, seeing the pain she endured made her think. She says she can’t imagine not being able to have children, or dealing with the pain of losing a child. She also has twin boy cousins, born to her aunt after a surrogacy journey, so she has a real urge and understanding that she wants to help another couple. She also loves being pregnant, but definitely doesn’t want any more kids.

I love how honest she is. Did I mention I love her already?

We chat some more about the fundamentals (I think), and she reminds Mr B so much of his sister that he immediately adopts a chilled, super-familiar stance and suddenly, just like that, she feels like part of the family.

“Oh! One more thing before you go, funny story . . . ” (we were about to go into the whole number 22 superstition thing what with my birthday and Mr B’s birthday and Lydia’s birthday all being on the 22nd and how we spookily trust in the 22) “ . . . so Sophie has this candle brand.” I show the webcam my No 22 box and take a breath to launch into the coincidence of the whole thing, when she says: “Oh my gosh! Twenty-two is my special number.”

Not just her birthday, but her special number too. Drop the mike, we’re done. Lydia is The One.

Oh my and glory be, it feels as if our fortune has turned the biggest corner so far. Yes it took an awfully long time to get here, but it genuinely feels as though we were waiting for this person. We’re arranging a time tomorrow to speak to Lydia and her husband. Mr B tells her not to rush home or worry about the traffic, we can do it whenever suits her. “The last thing we want is for you to crash your car because you’re worried about making the time slot.” Lydia laughs and says she has never had a car accident. That’s what we like to hear, safe hands all the way!

The next day we wait again for the Skype tone, but this time we’re more laid-back, like we’re connecting with old friends overseas. Only it’s ten minutes past the agreed time and nothing. Gulp. And then it’s 20 minutes, 25, and our thoughts go to the first and most habitual place they find — she has changed her mind. Oh God, she doesn’t know how to tell us. There was something she didn’t like. Was Mr B overfamiliar? Was I too stilted? Oh I can’t go through this again, rejection on top of everythi-BONG bing bong! “Lydia is trying to connect on Skype.”

And there she is, somewhat flushed and sitting with her husband who — coincidentally — looks an awful lot like our best man. What is going on here, universe? Why are you throwing comfort our way, because we’re getting suspicious.

“Oh my gosh guys, I’m so sorry I’m late, but you won’t believe what happened. I had a car accident on my way home.”

What? Like Mr B jokingly predicted? She has never so much as had a scratch blight her driving and now this? The only possible explanation is that we are cosmically linked, celestial confederates and, as such, together we have great power over the universe. In which case Mr B just has to ask for surrogacy success and it shall be so. I feel a bit guilty about that car crash thing, but it seems it is all for the greater good. (And she’s insured and it was at 3mph in a traffic queue, and she is now laughing her head off while her husband looks slightly less impressed. But only slightly . . .) See? Person perfection.

Knowing that we want a genuine connection with our surrogate — someone we want to have in our lives and our child’s life always — we honestly couldn’t feel luckier. And just maybe the universe has conspired to make it so.