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“Well?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, what was the question?”
“Where do we begin?”
She shook her head and, with all the concentration she could muster, she came up with an honest response: “I don’t know.”
“We’ve still got a lot of time,” I reminded her. “We don’t need to buy everything today.”
“I just want to set up the registry,” she said. “I know it’s a lot, but I’d been planning for this.”
Without looking away from everything in the store, she pulled out her phone where she’d put together a list, though there was no telling when she had done so. If I had to guess, this was something she’d been working on for years in the past, anticipating this very day when she would actually be able to see and touch the items that would surround our baby in the first years of their life.
“It’s just all suddenly so real,” she said.
I knew what she meant; it wasn’t just the furniture and supplies. It was all the other parents there, any pair of whom could have been us. Some of them were at various stages of visible pregnancy, and others were carrying around children, who were likely looking forward to meeting their new younger sibling.
And looking at the furniture, they often featured baby dolls — just artificial looking enough to escape the uncanny valley — to enhance the display. It made it easier to envision our baby sleeping softly in its crib as a plinking music box played lullabies in the background.
“Let’s start with the cribs,” Mila said, darting off towards one corner of the warehouse and expecting me to follow behind her. I mumbled a series of “excuse me”s and “I’m sorry”s as I maneuvered through the crowd, trying to keep up.
“We want something sturdy,” she said, “but I don’t want it to look like a cage. It should be something the baby wants to stay in, which will make it easier for them to fall asleep. I know some of them are new fancy materials, but I’m old-fashioned and would like one that’s wood.”
It was as if, while looking at the cribs, she was mentally marking each one as a maybe or a no, hoping to find the one that screamed at her as The Right One For Us. Part of me wanted to offer some input, but I was way out of my element here and didn’t want to break the concentration of Mila, who knew exactly what she was doing.
I wanted to be there with her, but why would she want me there? I had no idea what I was doing. I’d merely made a decision, almost on a whim, to follow my heart and join her on this journey that she’d been planning her entire life. It gave me a sudden feeling of uselessness and inadequacy. And, though I didn’t mean to do it, I let out a sigh.
Though it was unintentional, Mila certainly noticed. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
It was hard to find the words. The last thing I wanted to do was ruin an otherwise wonderful afternoon. But it wasn’t exactly something I could keep inside. “I don’t want to be dragging you down,” I said. “You’ve got a clear idea of what you want, and I can’t help but think I’m useless here.”
But it was more than that. This was an early step in preparing for the baby's arrival, and already I was in over my head. Was this just going to be a series of events that I was underprepared for and, as a result, make Mila’s life more difficult? Would she maybe be better off on her own?
“You’re not useless,” she said. “At the very least, you’re another set of eyes to look at things, another set of hands to hold things, and another set of feet if we need to flag down a salesperson.”
It felt so insubstantial, like anybody could have been here instead of me. There was nothing uniquely me that I could provide. But she smiled at me and took my hand.
“It feels good to have you here,” she said.
I smiled back, but wondered if she was just saying that to me to make me feel better about myself.
“Well,” I said, “then I’m glad to be here.”
I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. On the one hand, I was looking forward to the future, but it wouldn’t all be sunshine and rainbows. This trip alone represented a series of minor decisions on the road that we had ahead of us, and already I was feeling almost powerless. Despite devoting my life to fertility and helping people become pregnant, I didn’t know the first thing about having and raising children. Once the baby reached the outside world, I was no longer in the picture, and I was as clueless as every other parent out there, perhaps even more so.
It was too soon to reveal these insecurities to Mila. After all, though we had committed to the idea of committing to each other, anything could happen between now and when the baby was born. Already, I was having doubts and, with each one, I wondered if the baby was actually mine after all.
Odds were good in my favor. Mila and I had sex at a time when she should have been particularly fertile and, though I had implanted an embryo afterwards in her, the previous attempts had all failed. It was only common sense to expect the same results. But the odds were not overwhelmingly in my favor. After all, it could just have been that her previous doctor was, rest his soul, not very good at his job. There’s a certain amount of dexterity involved in the process, which one tends to lose along with age. I’d met surgeons with steady hands well into their 70s, of course, but they were the exceptions to the rule. I’d also met plenty of others who kept going despite better judgment telling them to retire before they hurt somebody.
One way or another, I was responsible for getting Mila pregnant, though, deep down, I kept thinking that maybe this wasn’t my baby after all. And, if it wasn’t, what was I even doing here? It made no sense. If it wasn’t my baby growing inside of her, then I was just her doctor.
I suppose this is why it was a bad idea to get involved with my patient in the first place.
Looking at her glowing face reminded me that I didn’t have much of a choice. She radiated a beauty and sexual energy that I was powerless to fight against. And with her in full-on baby mode, all of this was only enhanced.
At that moment, though, a sense of fear came over me: would this same energy and attraction continue forever? Would I still feel the same draw to her amidst sleepless nights and midnight feedings? Would living in a world of incessant screaming and crying make me regret this decision?
Then a horrifying thought crossed my mind — an intrusion as loud and disruptive as a thunderbolt: Maybe I should get out while I still have a chance.
