The Surrogate's Unexpected Miracle

And then he saw her face.

Propped up on her elbows, Ellie must have been watching this whole resuscitation effort and she had definitely heard those first sounds of a new life awakening.

Her hair was a tangle of blonde knots around a face that was pale enough to suggest she had lost a concerning amount of blood. And those eyes...

Huge, dark blue pools that were telling him something very different than the last words he had heard her speaking—that this wasn’t her baby and that nobody wanted him.

These were the eyes of a desperate woman. A mother...

‘Please,’ she whispered... ‘Please can I hold my baby?’

* * *

It had been that sound that had done it.

The cry from that tiny human that had been nestled within her body for so many months had taken the world as Ellie knew it and tipped it upside down. It had entered her ears but gone straight to her heart and captured it in the fiercest imaginable grip.

For a long, long moment, caught in what felt like a very disapproving stare from the doctor who’d just delivered her son, she thought that she was facing an impenetrable barrier. Someone who had no intention of letting her close to that tiny being she could just catch a glimpse of behind the solid figure of this new doctor.

But Sue was picking the baby up now.

‘Apgar score is ten at five minutes,’ she said, unable to keep a grin off her face. She was wrapping the baby in soft towels. ‘He’s looking great. I think we could let Mum have a bit of skin contact, until our paediatrician arrives, don’t you think?’

Luke’s response was a huff of sound that seemed indecisive but the anticipation of holding her baby against her own skin was so overwhelming that Ellie’s breath escaped in something that sounded like a sob as she lay back and held her arms out.

‘The placenta’s delivered.’ The young registrar was sounding a lot more confident now. ‘Seems intact and the bleeding’s almost stopped. Let’s prop you up a bit so you can hold your baby.’

Ellie had barely registered the last contractions as she watched the frantic efforts to save her son. Everything was all right now, though. She wasn’t about to bleed to death and the baby’s perfect Apgar score meant that he had come through this crisis with flying colours. With pillows being layered behind her, she was more than ready to accept the precious bundle that Sue was bringing towards her.

But why was this new doctor in her department still staring at her as if she was asking for something she really didn’t deserve?

He’d called her sweetheart only minutes ago.

Before helping her deliver her baby. Before he’d saved her life. Before he’d even properly begun to start saving the life of that baby.

And then something filtered into her brain. An echo of her own voice...

‘But he’s not my baby... And now nobody wants him...’

Oh, God...had she really said that?

No wonder he thought she was crazy. Or some kind of monster.

But Sue was beside her now and everybody else in this room and whatever tasks they were attending to ceased to exist as far as Ellie was concerned. Sue was unwrapping the tiny body of her baby, and another nurse was helping to remove the oversized tee shirt Ellie had been wearing. And her bra.

And there he was. In her arms and snuggled against her bare chest, while Sue arranged some soft, fluffy blankets around them both for warmth and as much privacy as was possible, given the surroundings.

Ellie couldn’t even lift her head to smile her thanks. Her baby’s eyes were open and he was staring up at her and nothing could have induced her to break that astonishing eye contact.

‘Hullo, you...’ she whispered. ‘I’m Mummy.’

The wash of emotion was like nothing Ellie had ever experienced. Something was changing in her body at a cellular level and she would never be the same person she’d been only minutes ago.

Who knew that love could be this powerful? So huge...and every bit of it was for this tiny little human.

Had she really believed she could have given him to someone else?

This baby was a part of herself and she would fight to the death if necessary to protect him.

It was the baby who finally broke that intense eye contact. His head bobbed against the arm it was cradled by and his tiny mouth opened and closed against the skin of Ellie’s breast. Instinctively, she adjusted her position, which brought her nipple within range of the baby’s mouth. And then she watched, in astonishment, as the baby found what it was seeking and latched on to her nipple as though he’d done it many times before.

Ellie’s jaw dropped. ‘He did that all by himself.’

‘He’s a genius.’ Sue smiled. ‘Oh...where’s my phone? We’ve got to get a photo of this.’

But Ellie had closed her eyes by the time Sue had fished her phone from the pocket of her scrub pants and she could feel a tear escape and roll down the side of her nose. And then another.

This feeling—the silky new born skin against her own, the shape of those tiny limbs within her arms and, most of all, the tug of that tiny mouth against her breast—was too much.

It felt like pure joy...

* * *

Luke had rather a lot of paperwork to do to document this emergency delivery that had happened on his watch. Someone had given him the forms on a clipboard and he had a pen in his hand but he hadn’t written a word, yet.

He kept looking sideways. From where he was standing, beside the trolley they’d used to resuscitate this baby, he could see the back of the baby’s head nestled in the crook of Ellie’s arms.

And he could see Ellie’s face.

She had no idea he was watching her. Luke doubted that she was aware of anything other than the baby she was holding.

They seemed to be staring at each other. Locked in a conversation that was so utterly private that Luke felt uncomfortable observing it.

So he looked away.

Eleanor Thomas, someone had filled in under the personal details on the form. Thirty-two years old. Thirty-six weeks pregnant.

He had to look back. It was none of his business that there was something weird going on. A surrogate pregnancy?

Who for?

Why?

And what had gone so wrong that she’d claimed that nobody wanted this child now?

It certainly didn’t look as if nobody wanted him.

Ellie looked, for all the world, as if she was in the middle of a personal miracle. Mesmerised by the face of her child. As though this baby was being bathed in as much love as it was possible for any person to bestow.