The New York Times Magazine 47she admired the parents’ dedication. They had
made it for the birth.
As her own delivery date grew closer, Liubov and
her partner discussed what she would do after the
baby was born. Her partner was urging her to stay
in Krakow — he would send their son, somehow,
to meet her, and at least the two of them would be
safe. Kersch-Kibler, who was desperate for help
with the surrogates, was encouraging her to stay
in Krakow and continue to work for the agency.
Despite the war, the agency was not shuttering its
doors. Clients were still calling looking for women
to carry their children. There would be future sur-
rogates to be screened, and Liubov could help
with that too. But Liubov longed to return to her
hometown, to be with her extended family and to
support her fellow Ukrainians.
She had taken a few days to conduct research on
various hospitals, considering carefully where she
should give birth. Poland was out of the question
because of the lengthy adoption process. A hospital
in Ukraine on the border of Hungary was situated
somewhere safe — but from what she could glean
from her research, the doctors’ reputations were
not as strong as she would have liked. Lviv, she
resolved, was where she would go to deliver. She
was 37 weeks pregnant and in pain: The baby’s
head was creating intense pressure in the small of
her back. She wanted to give birth the following
week, during the fi rst week of April — if the doctor
said the baby was big and healthy enough to do
so. But the intended parents did not agree; they
wanted her to wait until at least Week 39.
How much suff ering should her body — should
she, as a person — have to endure, beyond what
was necessary, Liubov wondered. She suggested
that the intended parents meet her in Lviv on
Monday, April 4, when she had an appointment
with a doctor for an ultrasound; together, with the
doctor, they could all make the fi nal decision about
whether the baby was ready for delivery.
The family agreed to the plan. The week before,
when she reached out to the parents to confi rm
that she’d see them on the 4th, to her surprise,
they didn’t respond. Usually, they wrote to her
within minutes — now, the hours ticked by. By
their silence she knew: They weren’t coming to
Lviv. That day, the couple only corresponded with
Kersch-Kibler. They forwarded her an email they
had received from the U.S. Embassy that advised
strongly against their entering Ukraine. Finally,
Liubov got a response from the intended parents.
Yes, the message conceded, if the doctors were fi ne
with inducing labor on the 4th, they were, too —
that way, Liubov would be less uncomfortable, and
she could get home sooner. They added with regret
that they would not be there as they might be busy
in Warsaw applying for an emergency passport
for the baby.
Liubov had always expected that the intended
parents would fi nd a way to be present at the birth
for her sake and the baby’s. Now she knew that
wasn’t true. For nine months, she felt she had done
her best for this child — she never went anywhere
someone was smoking, she stayed away from soda
and sweets, and most important, she even left the
country she wanted to stay and defend. Liubov
tried to be professional about her job, and she did
not feel about this baby anything close to the way
she did about her son when he was in her womb —
when her partner rubbed her belly lovingly, when
she sang lullabies to the boy she was growing into
being. But even still, she said, three days before
she’d head back to Lviv, ‘‘I’m not a stone. I have a
heart.’’ And she felt for this baby: It would be left for
some period with strangers at the hospital — she
was not expected to spend time with the infant,
for her own mental health, to make the separation
easier. ‘‘I have no words,’’ she wrote back to the
intended parents.
They responded gently: This was very diffi cult
for them, and they were sure it was diffi cult for her
as well. They tried to assuage her feelings — they
recognized all she had done from the beginning.
‘‘Maybe I won’t answer now,’’ she replied. She knew
she was feeling emotional and was afraid of what
she would say. If the doctors felt there was some
fl exibility about when and if to induce, she deter-
mined, ‘‘I’m the one who decides.’’
She had already resolved she would never be a
surrogate again. She was fi lled with regret for the
choice she had made, which had ended up having
such enfeebling consequences — taking away the
very reason she’d engaged in surrogacy in the fi rst
place, to amplify a sense of autonomy. ‘‘And what
did I do it for?’’ Liubov wondered aloud. ‘‘A second
car? I had a car.’’Liubov left Krakow on Saturday, April 2, for the
hospital in Lviv. The doctors decided, in the end,
that it was, in fact, best to wait a week before
inducing. On Thursday, April 7, Liubov, alone in
the hospital in the evening, felt sick to her stomach.
Flashes of heat came over her body, but she could
feel cold exhaling off the wall of her room, and
standing, she pressed as much of herself against
its cool surface, moaning from the pain. She forced
herself to make it to the hallway, where she fl agged
down a nurse and informed her it was time: She
was fi nally giving birth to the baby inside her.
The delivery took fi ve hours. Once it was over,
she was drained, so exhausted that when the air-
raid siren sounded, she informed the medical staff
still hovering nearby that she had no intention of
going anywhere. One doctor insisted on remain-
ing by her side for 15 minutes, but Liubov fi nally
persuaded her she should go. And then she was
alone. Even in her fog of fatigue, Liubov could feel
it: relief. Freedom. When she had recovered even
a little, it was as if she could fi nally breathe for the
fi rst time in months — the way it feels when you
go into the mountains, she thought, and it’s almost
more oxygen than you can take in.
Even though she advised other surrogate moth-
ers not to visit with the babies they delivered, fortheir own well-being, and she had assumed that
she would not see this baby, in the end, she
changed her mind. She was able to take delight
in that beautiful, sweet new life — and yet the
child represented to her, more than anything, a
job well done, and a temporary job at that. Her
past and her future were waiting for her at home.
Four days after giving birth, Liubov boarded
a bus that would take her home, heading east,
away from Krakow, away from Lviv, on roads
that showed, as she grew closer to her city,
crumbling cars, bombed buildings, a maternity
hospital that had been pummeled to pieces. The
road was bumpy, hard on her tired body, and yet
her overall feeling was elation. When she arrived
home, there was her partner, waiting for her at
the bus station, a man whom she had sworn many
times, since the start of the war, she’d never again
take for granted. She couldn’t stop touching him,
his solidness, his thereness.
The same week that Liubov headed east, the
baby she’d carried was heading west, fi rst, to the
border of Poland, in a car with Hrytsiv, a baby
nurse and a driver. Liubov made Hrytsiv prom-
ise she would tell the truth after she brought
the baby to the border — did the couple strike
her as people who would be good parents? The
report came back: She sensed strongly that they
would be. The mother had remained in Poland,
but when Hrytsiv met the father, right there in
the car, on the Ukrainian side of the border, he
instantly knew to change the diaper as soon as
the baby cried. ‘‘He’ll be a great father,’’ Hryt-
siv assured her. Liubov described all that had
transpired in mid-April by Zoom from her own
kitchen, a picture of sunfl owers behind her; she
looked lighter in every way.
By then, Nataliia was deep into her third tri-
mester; and Olya was nearing her fi rst-trimes-
ter mark. After a missile attack in Lviv took at
least seven lives, Marilyn and Antonio requested
that Olya be moved once more; Olya and her
daughter prepared to pick up and relocate to
Krakow for the remaining six months or so of
her pregnancy. Liubov, who had worked out an
arrangement with Kersch-Kibler that allowed her
to keep working for the agency from Ukraine,
was keeping an eye on both situations.
But that day in mid-April when we spoke,
Liubov had only one future event in mind. The
next day, she said, she would get in her car and
drive two hours to surprise her son on his 14th
birthday. He was meeting friends for a party
at a gazebo; she’d bring fresh vegetables and a
beloved banana cake from a well-known shop
in the city. She intended to show up early in the
morning, before his friends arrived for the party,
so he could react privately to the unexpected
reunion. When the weekend was over, she would
take him back home, where they would remain
with her secret intact. In a war full of terrible sor-
row and stories, it was for the best, she thought,
that this story remain her own. ¢