{"id":59864,"date":"2026-11-13T23:22:35","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T16:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/?p=59864"},"modified":"2026-11-13T23:22:35","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T16:22:35","slug":"my-husband-convinced-me-to-carry-a-baby-for-his-boss-promising-it-would-help-his-career-months-later-i-overheard-a-conversation-that-changed-everything-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/?p=59864","title":{"rendered":"I Agreed to Carry a Baby for My Husband\u2019s Boss, Believing It Would Secure Our Future. But During My Pregnancy, I Discovered My Husband\u2019s Hidden Plan…"},"content":{"rendered":"

PART 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time my husband suggested surrogacy, I was cutting his birthday cake.<\/p>\n

His boss, Everett, wanted a child. He was gay, unmarried, and looking for a woman willing to carry a baby for him.<\/p>\n

My husband had apparently mentioned how much I\u2019d loved being pregnant with our daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait, you\u2019ve been talking about my pregnancies with your boss?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly good things.\u201d He slipped his arms around my waist. \u201cHe said we\u2019re lucky to have Daisy and such a happy family.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember leaning into his embrace, feeling reassured.<\/p>\n

A week later, he brought it up again.<\/p>\n

Everett had invited us to dinner. My husband said it was simply an opportunity to discuss things, with no expectation that I\u2019d agree.<\/p>\n

When I hesitated, he took my hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s considering me for regional director. I\u2019m not saying helping him would guarantee anything, but it could show him how committed and reliable I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finances had caused plenty of tension in our marriage. Our mortgage had gone up, and the expensive car my husband claimed he needed for work drained nearly everything we managed to save.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t we sell the car first?\u201d<\/p>\n

He immediately released my hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI already feel like I\u2019m failing you and Daisy. Do you have to keep pointing it out?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I knew it, I was the one comforting him.<\/p>\n

From then on, he talked less about Everett becoming a father and more about how the promotion would improve our lives.<\/p>\n

He promised he could stop working weekends, take us on a proper vacation, and finally afford a new washing machine instead of the broken one we had to restart halfway through each load.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou keep saying you miss having me around,\u201d he reminded me. \u201cI\u2019m trying to find a way to spend more time with my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

I still loved my husband.<\/p>\n

And I missed the marriage we\u2019d once had.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I agreed.<\/p>\n

We went through medical examinations, counseling appointments, and all the required paperwork. Whenever I was asked whether anyone was pressuring me, I said no.<\/p>\n

My husband repeatedly told me the decision belonged to me alone.<\/p>\n

I wanted that to be true.<\/p>\n

But every time I thought about backing out, he\u2019d sit quietly at the kitchen table, staring at our overdue bills until I felt guilty.<\/p>\n

The second embryo transfer worked.<\/p>\n

When the pregnancy was confirmed, my husband burst into tears.<\/p>\n

Then his behavior changed.<\/p>\n

He became so attentive that I began hoping this arrangement might somehow repair our relationship.<\/p>\n

He carried the groceries, came with me to medical visits, and rested his hand on my growing stomach while we watched television.<\/p>\n

One evening, he felt the baby kick.<\/p>\n

He smiled at me in a way I hadn\u2019t seen in years.<\/p>\n

I placed my hand over his.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve missed this version of you,\u201d I told him softly.<\/p>\n

By the time I reached twenty-four weeks, I\u2019d started believing we were finding our way back to each other.<\/p>\n

Then one night, I woke up thirsty.<\/p>\n

My husband\u2019s side of the bed was empty.<\/p>\n

I noticed a light downstairs and heard his voice coming from the kitchen.<\/p>\n

I walked toward the doorway, planning to get some water.<\/p>\n

Then I heard him laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe really thinks this whole thing is about my promotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stopped with my hand against the doorframe.<\/p>\n

He paused to hear the other person\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, she doesn\u2019t suspect a thing. She\u2019s actually been much happier lately.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stood barefoot in the hallway.<\/p>\n

The refrigerator hummed behind his voice as he listened to whoever was on the phone.<\/p>\n

When he spoke again, his voice sounded unusually tender.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want that too. But we have to wait until she gives birth. She still has no idea who this baby is actually supposed to be for.\u201d<\/p>\n

I instinctively pressed my palm against my belly.<\/p>\n

The baby moved beneath my hand.<\/p>\n

Then my husband said something so terrible that I covered my mouth in horror.<\/p>\n

PART 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOnce she\u2019s delivered, I\u2019m leaving her, Everett. And then we can finally raise our child together.\u201d<\/p>\n

I held on to the doorframe.<\/p>\n

The baby I was carrying wasn\u2019t mine. On paper, it wasn\u2019t my husband\u2019s either. It belonged to his boss.<\/p>\n

And the man who\u2019d spent months telling me this was about a promotion had been planning a future with the intended father the whole time.<\/p>\n

I wish I could say I\u2019d seen it coming. I hadn\u2019t. I was a tired woman who loved her husband and wanted him back, and the man I loved knew that about me better than anyone alive.<\/p>\n

The floorboard near the stairs creaked under my weight. I knew every creaky board in that hallway after nine years in the house, and I stepped around the rest as I backed away. I slipped into the little downstairs bathroom and shut the door without turning on the light. I gripped the cold edge of the sink until the dizziness passed.<\/p>\n

Brandon and Everett.<\/p>\n

I repeated it in my head like a word in a foreign language.<\/p>\n

I thought of his hand on my stomach on the couch, the first real kick, and that big, slow, amazed smile I\u2019d taken for a man finding his way back to me. He hadn\u2019t been smiling because he was coming home. He\u2019d been imagining the family he would build without me, and I was just the place it was growing.<\/p>\n

When I finally came out, his voice was still murmuring behind the kitchen door. I went upstairs.<\/p>\n

Daisy\u2019s door was cracked open, the way it always was. She was curled on her side, hair across her face, holding her stuffed rabbit, Captain, under her chin. I sat on the hallway floor with my back against the wall and counted the weeks to the due date.<\/p>\n

Sixteen.<\/p>\n

Brandon had been counting them too, for a very different reason.<\/p>\n

Eventually I got up, lay down on the far edge of our bed, and pulled the blanket to my chin. Later I heard him climb the stairs, brush his teeth, and slide in beside me. He reached across in the dark and found my hand.<\/p>\n

I kept my breathing slow and pretended to be asleep. It was the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done.<\/p>\n

In the morning he kissed my forehead at the counter.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleep okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBaby keeping you up? I\u2019ll grab that Thai place you like on the way home.\u201d<\/p>\n

He flipped his car keys up and caught them, the same gesture I\u2019d watched a thousand times. Suddenly it looked like a stranger doing it. I said \u201cokay,\u201d and he left.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to confront him yet. If I did, he would deny it, or cry, and somehow by the end I\u2019d be the one apologizing. I needed to understand what I had signed first.<\/p>\n

After I dropped Daisy at school, I sat in the library parking lot and called Rhonda Pace, the independent attorney who had reviewed my surrogacy agreement. I told her everything. She didn\u2019t interrupt.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarnie, I\u2019m so sorry,\u201d she said at last. \u201cI won\u2019t promise you a loophole, and I won\u2019t guess about the contract until I\u2019ve read it against the law in this state. But some things I can tell you now. Your medical decisions are yours. Not Everett\u2019s, not your husband\u2019s. And you need a family-law attorney today. Not for the surrogacy. For your marriage and your daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

By lunch I had an appointment. I spent my break at the kitchen table rereading all forty-one pages. The first time, I\u2019d skimmed the insurance and payment sections and trusted that someone would flag anything wrong. This time I read every line. Every signature looked like a decision I\u2019d made to protect a marriage Brandon had already left in his mind.<\/p>\n

My hands shook with anger. But anger can\u2019t undo a signature. Understanding it was the next best thing.<\/p>\n

I made more calls. I booked a session with Dr. Paulette Greer, the clinic counselor, for me alone. I phoned Winnie, the nurse coordinator who had been at every appointment, and asked that all information go directly to me and not through my husband. She didn\u2019t ask why. I was grateful.<\/p>\n

Then I called my sister, Jodi, a night-shift ER nurse who once punched a boy in the nose for stealing my bike when she was nine and he was twelve.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you pick Daisy up tomorrow and keep her a few hours?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course. Are you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

That afternoon Daisy came home talking about a classmate whose lizard had escaped during show-and-tell and run into the coat closet. I laughed in the right places. Later I heard her through the floor, talking to my stomach.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cOkay, baby, this one\u2019s really good. What do you call a bear with no teeth?\u201d A pause. \u201cA gummy bear!\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat on the stairs and put my face in my hands.<\/p>\n

At five-thirty, Brandon texted: Client dinner tonight, totally forgot to tell you. Won\u2019t be late. Love you.<\/em><\/p>\n

He had forgotten the Thai food.<\/p>\n

I opened our joint checking account. I\u2019d never really looked at his side of it. Why would I audit my own husband? I scrolled back month by month and found charges at an Italian place called Bellini\u2019s, over and over, every few weeks. I knew where Bellini\u2019s was. It was four blocks from Everett\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

The dates matched nights he\u2019d said he was working late and weekends he\u2019d said he was covering shifts. A restaurant charge proves nothing alone. But it put dates on the lies. I kept scrolling back, and the earliest was from the previous February.<\/p>\n

That was before the birthday cake, before he ever said the word surrogate<\/em> to me.<\/p>\n

I thought about all those nights he\u2019d spread the mortgage statement, the car payment, and the credit card bill across the kitchen table like a hand of cards, then sat in silence until I apologized for hesitating. The bills were real. The mortgage really had gone up. But he had taken something real that frightened us both and turned it into a lever.<\/p>\n

At breakfast I asked, \u201cAny news on regional director?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot yet.\u201d He didn\u2019t look up from his phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid Everett ever actually promise you the job? Ever say your name for it to anyone?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked up, frowning. \u201cWhy are you interrogating me?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the move he\u2019d made a hundred times. Before, I would have reassured him instantly. I\u2019m not interrogating you, honey, I know how hard you work.<\/em> This time I said nothing. I didn\u2019t apologize. I just looked at him until he dropped his eyes to his phone, finished his coffee, and left.<\/p>\n

The next day Jodi picked up Daisy, and I met Lorraine Okafor, a family-law attorney whose office sat above a bakery in an old brick building downtown. She had a bowl of peppermints on her desk and photos of three teenage boys on the shelf behind her.<\/p>\n

I talked for an hour. She took notes, then set down her pen.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay. I\u2019m sorry. This is a terrible way to find something out. I won\u2019t tell you it\u2019s simple. You have a marriage, a seven-year-old, a house, debt, and a pregnancy with a contract attached. We\u2019ll untangle them one at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

We covered temporary finances, the mortgage, the joint account, and a fair parenting schedule. By the end I had a list of concrete steps. In the parking lot I read it three times. It was the first time in weeks I felt I had any control over anything.<\/p>\n

That evening I waited at the kitchen table. Daisy was upstairs, fed and bathed. Jodi had dropped her off at seven and whispered at the door, \u201cCall me after. Any hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SUV pulled in at 8:40. Brandon came through the side door loosening his tie.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, honey. Have you eaten?\u201d<\/p>\n

He opened the refrigerator for a water.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long have you been sleeping with Everett?\u201d<\/p>\n

His hand stayed on the door. The cold light lit his face. He didn\u2019t turn around.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard you. Two in the morning, in this kitchen. You said that once I delivered, you were leaving me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a long moment he didn\u2019t move. Then he closed the refrigerator, sat down across from me, and set the unopened bottle on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want you to find out like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOver a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore you asked me to carry his baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t answer. I\u2019d seen the statements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas there ever a promotion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere might still be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t my question.\u201d<\/p>\n

He rubbed his forehead. \u201cEverett never promised one. He never even brought it up. I thought if you believed it could help us, you\u2019d say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remembered his arms around my waist at the cake, his voice in the dark: I\u2019m trying to find a way to come home.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou already knew you wanted to leave. When you asked me, you knew. And you made me think this was how I could keep you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI never said that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

I made myself ask the last question. \u201cWhat did you think would happen to Daisy?\u201d<\/p>\n

He glanced at her school photo on the bookshelf, the one with the missing front tooth she\u2019d practiced smiling for in the bathroom mirror for a week. He\u2019d promised to help her on picture day and left early for a meeting instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never abandon her. Everett has a room upstairs. We could paint it any color she wants. She could stay with us on weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve planned a bedroom. For my daughter. In his house.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do I. But you don\u2019t get to plan her life on a phone call at two in the morning.\u201d He began describing weekends and holidays and who would do Monday drop-off. I stopped him. \u201cNo. Not tonight, and not like this. We\u2019ll work it out with lawyers and help, not because you and Everett decided.\u201d<\/p>\n

I took my phone and Lorraine\u2019s notes upstairs, locked the bedroom door, and called Jodi.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Rhonda arranged a meeting with Everett alone, in a conference room at her office. She sat beside me with a legal pad and her red reading glasses.<\/p>\n

He arrived exactly on time in a tailored gray jacket and folded his hands on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarnie, I understand this has been very upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know my husband was telling me a promotion could save our finances?\u201d<\/p>\n

He shifted. \u201cBrandon told me you understood how much this opportunity could help your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich family?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at the table. \u201cYou signed freely. You had counseling and your own attorney. Everything was done properly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI signed because I believed what my husband told me. Did you know he was married when you started seeing him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know he planned to leave me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d discussed living together. Eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore he asked me about surrogacy?\u201d<\/p>\n

The room went quiet. Rhonda didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought it would be kinder,\u201d Everett said quietly, \u201cto wait until after the birth. Brandon said you\u2019d never agree if you knew about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the piece I\u2019d needed. He had known I might refuse if I knew the truth, and he had let me agree anyway. I remembered him asking in his living room who my support system would be. I\u2019d said Brandon. He had smiled and said, \u201cYou\u2019re very fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remembered Dr. Greer asking if anyone was pressuring me. I\u2019d pictured shouting and threats. I hadn\u2019t pictured a husband going silent over the bills until I gave him what he wanted, or a soft-spoken man with cloth napkins telling me he trusted me more than a stranger.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wanted a baby,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd my husband wanted a new life. You both decided I was how you\u2019d get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not how we saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. That\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

My hand was steady on my stomach, where the baby rolled in slow, sleepy turns.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s how this works now. Everything about this pregnancy goes through Rhonda and my medical team. Brandon doesn\u2019t manage my appointments or carry messages, and he\u2019s not in the room unless I ask. No private requests, no dinners at your house, no pretending this is a happy family project. Rhonda will go through every word again. If the agreement is valid, I\u2019ll honor it. I won\u2019t punish a baby for what you two did. But neither of you gets to manage me anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

His eyes were wet. \u201cCould we at least stay on good terms?\u201d<\/p>\n

I stood. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The months that followed were no triumphant montage. I went to ultrasounds and blood tests alone or with Jodi. Winnie held my hand through one draw when I started crying for no reason. Dr. Greer listened to me for fifty minutes and said, \u201cYou\u2019re allowed to be angry and still be a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brandon moved into a temporary apartment in March. Later I learned from Lorraine that he\u2019d quietly sold the SUV. We worked on a parenting schedule with a mediator named Carol, who kept a box of tissues on every table. We argued about weekends and holidays, and about whether Daisy should sleep at Everett\u2019s before she knew him as anything but \u201cDaddy\u2019s boss.\u201d But we kept going, because Daisy deserved that.<\/p>\n

In April we told her together, sitting on her bed, that Mommy and Daddy would live in different houses. We didn\u2019t tell her the rest. You don\u2019t explain adult betrayals to a seven-year-old.<\/p>\n

She held Captain tightly. \u201cWill I still see Daddy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d we said at the exact same moment. Brandon\u2019s voice cracked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill you both still come to swim lessons?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

She climbed into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. His face was in her hair and his shoulders were shaking. I hated him, I did. But I couldn\u2019t hate that.<\/p>\n

One March afternoon, cleaning the junk drawer, I found a folded paper at the bottom in Brandon\u2019s handwriting. Places to take Daisy on vacation: Myrtle Beach. Outer Banks. The cabin by the lake in Michigan. Disney (when she\u2019s 8?).<\/em> Across the top, underlined twice: JUST THE THREE OF US.<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know when he\u2019d written it, or whether he\u2019d meant it. I folded it back into quarters and put it in my nightstand. I wasn\u2019t ready to throw out every memory just because I understood the lies. Some of those memories were mine.<\/p>\n

Jodi came every Tuesday with pizza and sparkling water for me. \u201cYou can\u2019t stay mad at him forever,\u201d she said once. Then, \u201cOkay, fair. You can. I\u2019ll stay mad with you. Pass the pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labor started in May, at thirty-nine weeks. Jodi drove me at four in the morning with the hazards on, running every yellow light. Everett waited in the family lounge, as the agreement required. Brandon stayed away. I had asked him to, and Rhonda had put it in writing.<\/p>\n

It took nine hours, faster than Daisy. The baby was a boy, seven pounds three ounces, quiet, with wide dark eyes taking in the room. I had asked for a few minutes with him, after thinking it over with Dr. Greer, and the nurse laid him on my chest. He was warm and heavy and turned his face toward my heartbeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi, little one,\u201d I whispered. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be okay. You\u2019re going to be loved.\u201d<\/p>\n

I told him one joke, I don\u2019t know why. \u201cWhat do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear. That one\u2019s from Daisy. She told you that one a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I nodded to the nurse, and she wrapped him in a striped blanket and carried him down the hall to his father.<\/p>\n

Jodi held my hand. I cried, as Dr. Greer had said I might. But I wasn\u2019t crying because I wanted to keep him. He had never been mine. I was crying for the woman who\u2019d sat in Everett\u2019s living room and believed every word, and who had put her husband\u2019s hand on her stomach and whispered there you are.<\/em><\/p>\n

After a while, I stopped.<\/p>\n

Once Rhonda had reviewed every document one last time, Everett became the baby\u2019s legal father. He named him Oliver, after his grandfather. Through Rhonda he sent one card: Thank you. I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019ll make sure he knows how he got here. E.<\/em> I put it in the drawer with Brandon\u2019s vacation list.<\/p>\n

Brandon moved in with Everett in June.<\/p>\n

I came home to the quietest house I\u2019d ever known. No SUV in the driveway, no tie over a kitchen chair, no phone buzzing on the counter at two in the morning. And a washing machine that still stopped halfway through every load.<\/p>\n

In July I bought a new one. I went to the appliance store alone on a Saturday, and a young salesman named Curtis walked beside me explaining every model in exhausting detail. I chose a plain white front-loader on sale and paid with money I\u2019d set aside from each paycheck since February, in the account Lorraine had told me to open on day one.<\/p>\n

Two men delivered it on Tuesday and hauled the old one out of the basement, clunking and groaning. I stood and watched the test cycle run all the way through. Wash, rinse, spin.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t stop once.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a victory parade. It was just one thing in my house that worked without anyone promising to fix it someday.<\/p>\n

One evening in late August I was matching socks on the couch when Daisy came in wearing her cat pajamas, poking her tongue through the gap where she\u2019d lost another tooth, holding Captain by one ear.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom? Did Daddy leave because we did something wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

I put the socks down. I\u2019d practiced this answer with Dr. Greer and in the car, and my heart dropped anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, sweetheart. Not at all. Grown-ups sometimes make big choices that change a marriage, and none of it was your fault. Not one bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

She thought. \u201cAre you leaving too?\u201d<\/p>\n

I pulled her into my lap, though she was getting too big for it and her legs hung off the side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m right here. I\u2019m not going anywhere. You\u2019ll always know where to find me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She leaned against my shoulder. After a while she slid off, went to the bookshelf, and came back with a big cardboard box: a five-hundred-piece puzzle of a lighthouse on a cliff, ocean crashing against the rocks. We\u2019d started it in January, done a quarter of the edges, and stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood,\u201d she said, setting it on my lap. \u201cBecause you promised we\u2019d finish this.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pushed the socks aside and cleared the coffee table. Daisy dumped out the pieces. Some scattered across the floor and she didn\u2019t care. She dug through the pile, found one with a straight edge and a bit of blue sky, and handed it to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorner piece. You start.\u201d<\/p>\n

I held that little piece of cardboard. For almost a year I had been waiting: for Brandon to come home from work, from his weekend shifts, to look up from his phone, to come back to me the way he used to be. Waiting in a dark hallway outside a kitchen door.<\/p>\n

I set the corner piece down on the coffee table, right where it belonged.<\/p>\n

For the first time in a long while, I wasn\u2019t waiting for anyone to come home.<\/p>\n

\n
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PART 1 The first time my husband suggested surrogacy, I was cutting his birthday cake. His boss, Everett, wanted a child. He was gay, unmarried, and looking for a woman … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59866,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59864\/revisions\/59866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}