As a single mom in a small town, there's only one thing I want. Another baby. When all the roads to getting what I want lead to dead ends, I turn to one of my best friends for help.
In my mind, Trent Castillo is the perfect baby daddy. He has good g...
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We spend the Fourth of July together at the parade and fireworks, and then we come home, and I make fireworks go off for Emily in a different way after Amir is asleep.
I don't know what made Emily relax the rules between us, but I'm not questioning it. For however long this arrangement lasts, I'm savoring every moment.
But the length of this arrangement is weighing heavily on my mind when I make an appointment to see Doctor Rigilotto.
"Trent! It's wonderful to see you again," Doctor Rigilotto says as he enters the examination room. "What can I help you with today?"
I checked the internet before making this appointment, but my reading is slow and laborious, and I wasn't completely sure I understood what was being said in all those blog posts and medical journals. Beyond that, I probably could have asked Emily, but I didn't want to make it seem like I was putting pressure on her or to imply in any way that I wanted our arrangement to have an expiry date.
"How long does it normally take couples to get pregnant?" I ask.
"You and your partner are trying to get pregnant?" he asks, tapping the keys to get into his computer.
I wince at the partner comment, but there's no way to correct him without making it awkward. He'll already see and remember the tests I asked for months ago once he's in there.
"We've been trying since April," I say, "and we haven't had any luck."
"Your sperm count was good," he says, scanning the results on the computer. He leans back in the chair and steeples his fingers. "We tell teenagers that the chance of getting pregnant is a hundred percent chance every month to prevent risky behavior. But the truth is that the chance is more like twenty percent. Even once a pregnancy has occurred, there's roughly a twenty percent chance of miscarriage."
"At what point do doctors step in if a couple has been trying for a while and not getting pregnant?"
"We usually suggest a year," he says.
"A year!" I sit forward in my chair, and I don't know why I'm so shocked, but I never considered this deal with Emily going on for that long. I thought a month or two, maybe. Now that we're well beyond that, and we're becoming more and more comfortable in ways I'm not sure we should be comfortable with each other, I was hoping he'd tell me it would happen any day now. Instead, he's told me we're not even at the halfway point yet.
"A year." He confirms with a chuckle. "At that point, I'd suggest that your partner has some tests run to see whether there are any problems on her end."
"She's had a baby before," I say.
"Well," the doctor says, his brow furrowed. "That doesn't always mean there are no problems, but it should give you hope that you'll be pregnant within the year."
