Chapter 2 - We Had Three Embryos Left When I Told Richard to Stop
Richard and I had spent five years trying to have a child.
By the time I turned forty, fertility treatment had stopped feeling hopeful and started feeling administrative.
Blood tests. Hormones. Retrievals. Waiting rooms. Numbers.
Our final retrieval produced five blastocysts.
Genetic screening left three embryos considered suitable for transfer.
All three were created from my eggs and Richard’s sperm.
The first transfer failed.
The second implanted.
For eleven weeks, I was pregnant.
Then there was no heartbeat.
People describe miscarriage as loss, which is accurate but incomplete. For me, it also became humiliation. My body had become something everyone monitored, discussed and tried to optimize.
Richard reacted differently.
He wanted another transfer almost immediately.
I did not.
“We still have two embryos,” he kept saying.
As if grief became smaller because something remained in storage.
I refused another pregnancy.
Richard proposed gestational surrogacy.
At first, I agreed to explore it.
We hired separate reproductive-law attorneys. We met with an agency. We reviewed carrier profiles.
I signed preliminary agency documents allowing matching to begin.
That became important later.
Preliminary matching authorization was not permission to transfer an embryo into whoever Richard selected.
Then we were tentatively matched with a gestational carrier named Monica Reyes.
Before any transfer occurred, Monica withdrew for medical reasons.
I took it as an ending.
Richard took it as a delay.
We argued for weeks.
Finally, on September 6, I sent a written message to Brighton Reproductive Medicine, our attorneys and the agency.
I am withdrawing consent for any embryo transfer into a gestational carrier until I personally provide new written authorization. Do not proceed based on prior documents.
The clinic acknowledged it.
Dr. Miller himself replied:
Understood. No transfer will occur without renewed authorization from both intended parents.
I kept the email.
Then I stopped opening fertility-clinic messages.
Richard said he would handle storage fees.
I let him.
That was one of my mistakes, but it was not consent.
Six months later Emma underwent an embryo transfer.
I knew nothing about it.
Back in the clinic conference room after I slapped her, Dr. Miller opened the electronic chart.
There was my September withdrawal.
Clearly visible.
Then another message appeared seven weeks later.
Sent from my secondary email address.
Richard and I have reconsidered. I rescind my pause. He may proceed with matching and transfer planning on our behalf.
I stared at the screen.
“I didn’t send that.”
Richard said nothing.
Dr. Miller clicked the next document.
A carrier-substitution addendum listed Emma as the new gestational carrier.
My electronic signature appeared at the bottom.
Again, not mine.
Then came the embryo-transfer authorization.
Again:
Diane Carter.
Again, a signature.
Dr. Miller looked at Richard.
“Did you have access to Mrs. Carter’s email?”
Richard answered carefully.
“We share household accounts.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Yes.”
My secondary account was the address I used for household administration, travel confirmations and some medical billing. Richard knew the password because I had given it to him during the miscarriage when I could not tolerate another notification.
I looked at him.
“You used my email?”
His lawyer was not there yet, and suddenly Richard became cautious.
“I believed you had given me authority to handle the process.”
“No.”
“Diane, you told me you couldn’t look at any of it anymore.”
“That meant stop showing me invoices.”
“You said, ‘Do whatever you want with the embryos.’”
I remembered saying something similar during one of our worst fights.
I also remembered what came next.
“Then I emailed the clinic and specifically revoked consent.”
He had no answer.
Dr. Miller pulled up the transfer authorization audit trail.
The verification code for my signature had been sent to the secondary email account.
It was accessed eleven minutes later.
The authorization was completed from an IP address associated with Richard’s private office.
That did not yet prove who touched the keyboard.
But the next record was harder to explain.
Four minutes after “my” signature, Richard emailed the surrogacy coordinator:
Diane does not want direct involvement until we know the pregnancy is stable. Please respect her privacy and route everything through me.
That was how a pregnancy created from my body had progressed for twenty-four weeks without anyone speaking to me.
Richard had not merely hidden Emma.
May you like
He had instructed everyone to interpret my absence as my own request.
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