The Sisterhood of Motherhood

By Darla Nagel

As Bethany, the baby sister of the family, steps up to support her sister-in-law and brother through their infertility and cancer diagnosis, she steps into the role of a gestational surrogate. Determined to push herself beyond her comfort zone, Bethany faces a year of medical and legal chall

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darla Nagel
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218414382

Darla Nagel

Darla Nagel is a thirtysomething biomedical copyeditor from mid-Michigan. Though happily single and "mom" only to a border terrier, she loves playing with, giving books and stickers to, and baking cookies for children. Previously she published a memoir, Lightening the Shadow, and she writes and copyedits short articles for Natural Awakenings. She blogs for people living with chronic illnesses and their supporters at www.darlanagel.com.

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January

She supposed she did it because she wanted a sister. She had wanted a sister while growing up under her older brother’s domination, and now she wanted a happy, healthy sister-in-law. That sister-in-law wouldn’t be happy until she had a second child and wouldn’t be healthy until her cervical cancer was gone.

I want to see if I could be a surrogate for you, Bethany Harding said, fully meaning it but not considering the full meaning of it.

Her sister-in-law, Ivy Jean, froze in her chair on the balcony. After a moment, Ivy Jean made a sound that could’ve been half laugh, half sob. Aw, that means so much to me, she answered. She made the same sound but louder. But no. I couldn’t ask so much of you. I want this, a baby, for myself.

Maybe it’s not legal for a first-time pregnant woman to be a surrogate, Bethany mused as the thought struck her. Other thoughts, other obstacles, popped in her mind like fireworks: her painkiller for her frequent headaches, her living in a different state from Ivy Jean and Brandon, her high-deductible health insurance. But now I really want to look into it, just to see, you know. She cleared her throat. But I’m sorry, I kinda cut you off. So…the doctor thinks cut out the cancer, or do a full hysterectomy?

A full hysterectomy, within two or three months, Ivy Jean replied. No time to try implanting our embryo. Menopause when I’m forty-one. Ivy Jean grimaced. I’ll get a second opinion, but I don’t want to wait too long on the hysterectomy. It’s the only way to cure the cancer.

Bethany could envision and didn’t like Ivy Jean’s thick dark hair graying or wrinkles at the edges of her brown eyes or full and boldly colored lips. Or would those signs of aging not appear if Ivy Jean still had ovaries? Bethany was eight years younger and almost short enough to be considered petite but, with several random freckles on her cheeks and golden bangs that almost hid a scar across one eyebrow, lacked East Asian beauty. To see more beauty, Bethany looked at the Florida sunset. This balcony of a vacation condo was too beautiful a place for so bleak a conversation, and the mismatch was as strong as feeling the summer-like breeze during the last week of January. Ivy Jean seemed to read her mind because she switched the topic to their plans for tomorrow after only a brief comment of gratitude that the cancer could be stopped before it spread. The condo had been booked by the travel- and Internet-savvy Ivy Jean for the Harding ladies and Luke, Ivy Jean and Brandon’s only child.

Bethany and Ivy Jean had hit it off when they met in spring 2018, the weekend before Ivy Jean and Brandon’s engagement was announced. Fully experienced in interpersonal relationships from her demanding Cleveland Clinic medical office manager job, Ivy Jean hadn’t seemed nervous when meeting the Harding family—Bethany, Dad Frank, and Mom Rebecca—at their house in Webster. Webster was a suburb of the university and hospital city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ivy Jean had entered the house with wide-open arms, wide smile, and slightly wide As and Rs in her greetings from growing up near Atlanta. Bethany had always wanted a sister instead of the loud, big, bullying, smart-aleck Brandon, who was four years older than she. Brandon came in, carrying the gift basket Ivy Jean had assembled. Ivy Jean gracefully slipped out of her ballet flats at Rebecca’s invitation, commented about the previous night’s NHL game to Frank, and gushed to Bethany, Brandon’s told me all about his baby sister. Bethany could only smile in reply, surprised Brandon had said more than only a sentence about his only sibling. Did he care that much, or had Ivy Jean asked about her? Ivy Jean clearly had an effect on the Hardings. Bethany felt comfortable enough to abandon her usual extreme quiet and hunched posture upon meeting someone new, and Brandon was smiling, talkative, and not teasing anyone except for his soon-to-be-fiancée.

The day after the engagement, Ivy Jean texted Bethany, I’m so excited to get a sister! Through the following conversation Bethany learned she was an only child of parents who had divorced when she was eight and now lived on opposite coasts of the country. Brandon and Ivy Jean’s wedding took place only a few months later, in a park by a harbor, simple and organized by Ivy Jean. All Bethany, Rebecca, and Frank had to do was buy a gift, dress for the heat, hug Ivy Jean’s mother and convey that they were ready to welcome and love her daughter, and hold up a smartphone so that Grandma, Rebecca’s mom, could watch via video. Within a month, Brandon accepted his current engineer job at a Cleveland steel mill.

Their only child, Luke, born in September 2019, was now a scrawny, unstoppable three-year-old. He was handsome, having inherited most of Ivy Jean’s Korean features but Brandon’s perfectly oval face, perfectly plush eyelashes, and perfectly straight teeth. He was obsessed with construction equipment and unaware of his parents’ fertility and IVF challenges and his mommy’s potentially aggressive cervical cancer discovered during the first fertility doctor appointment.

She told you, then, Rebecca Harding remarked to her daughter, fumbling with the clasp of her pearls in their room at the vacation condo and squinting to see without her glasses over her deep blue eyes. Her eyes were one of many features she had handed down to Bethany. The dim light obscured the color of her gold-going-gray hair hanging stick straight after a day of breezes and humidity. She told me while you were helping Luke with his ice cream.

And I told her, ‘I want to look into being a surrogate.’ I don’t think she wants me to. Bethany stood on her tiptoes behind her mom and undid the necklace.

Thank you, Rebecca said. I had the same thought: ‘Bethany would be a surrogate mother.’ But then I thought of your, well, irregular cycle. Would that prevent…

Yeah, I’m not sure. Still, I want to figure out if it’s possible…after this weekend. She started to make a mental note, then found a previous mental note that reminded her of her trouble with short-term memory and instead made her note in her journal on the nightstand. Seven years since the car crash next week. She turned off the light on that particular thought, then turned off the lamp and said goodnight to her mom.

Early February

The three ladies could forget Ivy Jean’s bad news in the midst of beach walks, mangoes, ocean, and key lime pie. When they went back to their homes in Ohio and Michigan, the future concerns were sitting on the sofas and plopped on the pillows, waiting. Bethany watched ob-gyns talk about embryo transfers, both for a genetic mother carrying a baby conceived in vitro and for a surrogate carrying another couple’s baby, on YouTube, who gave some hope. Ivy Jean and Brandon had only one embryo to transfer, but surrogacy could still go forward. According to the videos, the norm was to transfer one embryo at a time rather than two. Bethany read the website of the off-label drug she took for headaches and was assured that it was safe during pregnancy and could even boost fertility. She was not encouraged by surrogacy agencies’ websites, however.

Surrogates must be no older than 40 and have proven fertility (one live birth without assisted reproductive technology).

She is required to have successfully carried and delivered at least one baby, without birth complications.

Please do not complete our intake form if you are older than 42 or have had a miscarriage or stillbirth. 

Surrogates and intended parents (biological parents) who make private arrangements (without using an agency such as ours) will both require legal representation to ensure risks and parental rights are communicated and understood.

Rats. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to get lawyers involved, Bethany thought as