First Impressions

Even for the second time.

Last month, I performed at The Moth for the first time in years. Many people asked to hear my story. I’ll put it in my newsletter next month, I said. I knew the date I wanted to publish it––an anniversary of one of the major events that took place. I’ve actually wanted to share this story for a long time, especially given the recent political landscape.

So, this is the story I told in front of a room full of strangers (and two good friends). Since I’m not on a five-minute time limit, I’ve added details I wish I’d been able to include.

The theme for that night: First Impressions.

In the middle of January 2021, my pants felt a little tight. But whose pants didn’t feel tight after the holidays––even one in quarantine? On a whim, I took a pregnancy test. It was negative, so I breathed a sigh of relief. I took the second test in the box a week later to be sure. It basically screamed at me: YOU ARE DEFINITELY PREGNANT. The first thing I thought was, I can’t possibly be pregnant. After a polycystic ovarian syndrome diagnosis at 16 and light fertility assistance to get pregnant the first time, getting accidentally knocked up was never in the cards for me. The doctors had all made that VERY clear. 

The second thought I had was I didn’t want to be pregnant. It was the height of the pandemic; pre-vaccines, my son was only 16 months old, and we had had barely any help his entire life. Most importantly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted more than one kid. As a happily only child, I had never been.

I went to see my OB, and sure enough, there was a tiny, 5-week dot on the ultrasound screen. “Congrats!” every nurse said to me. “Thanks?” was all I could say.

Behind the closed doors of her office, my doctor said, “Well, this is exciting. Number two.”

“It wasn’t planned,” I said nervously.

“Well, most pregnancies aren’t,” she said very matter-of-factly.

“What if…I don’t want to be pregnant?”

“Oh, we do that too.”

I spent the next week pregnant, debating not being pregnant. Weighing all the pros and cons. Deliberating with my husband. Confiding in friends. Being counseled by a physician’s assistant at the doctor’s office.

Ultimately, I decided to terminate. As it was a very early pandemic, I had to do it alone. Even though I didn’t have my husband by my side, if I really think about it (which I don’t like to), I walked in as we and walked out as me.

I was knocked flat by the weight of a grief I never saw coming. How could something I chose to do hurt so badly? I spontaneously cried every day. I choked on tears every time I saw a pregnant woman. When I saw moms wrangling two kids at the playground, I became angry with myself; why did they think they could do it, not me? I obsessively performed mental math, trying to determine age differences between siblings.

I didn’t regret the decision but didn’t feel good about it either. I kept reminding myself that I made a choice with the best information I had at the time. I found solace in an online forum for abortion support, learning that there were plenty of other mothers who had made this choice. In fact, I learned that mothers make up the highest percentage of people who get abortions.

But this is not an abortion story. This is, actually, a birth story. 

Three months later, I became unexpectedly pregnant again. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I understand how babies are made. But, the cystic ovaries! Lighting rarely strikes twice! I was actively trying NOT to get pregnant! And without getting into the details, let me assure you that the likelihood of conception was slim to none. 

“Oh, you’re back,” said, out loud, to the pregnancy test. I don’t know if this was my mind’s way of making meaning from my grief or if it was real, but everything in my body told me this was the same soul I’d turned away a few months prior.

This was the first impression I had of my daughter. Tenacious, bold, demanding. Bossy. She wanted to be born. She wanted ME as her mother. She wasn’t taking NO for an answer. Ok, I said. You win. But that didn’t mean I was happy about it. 

Something about me is that I don’t like to be told what to do. I don’t do well with authority figures, even when they’re the size of a poppy seed and living inside one of my organs. And that is how I entered second-time motherhood: kicking and screaming and totally in denial. I wasn’t going to let this fetus bully me.

So, I ignored her. But she persisted. Oh, she found some pretty unsubtle ways to remind me that my body was now hers. Like, at 12 weeks pregnant when an uncontrollable nosebleed landed me in emergency surgery. Or the insane sciatica pain she inflicted by sitting on a nerve for one whole month as I hobbled around trying to chase my 2-year-old son. There isn’t much time to feel pregnant the second time, so it wasn’t terribly difficult to put it out of my mind. Denial and defensiveness are always easy tools to grab when you’re in pain. 

I was struggling with grief, shame, guilt, and immense fear of how my life was going to change. Becoming a mother during the pandemic put me on high alert in every possible way, and it took everything in me to stay in control at all times. Keep things moving. Keep it all together. Don’t change a thing. And here she was, about to change everything.

And I was getting the hang of being the mother of one child. I knew how to balance myself with being a mother. I deeply feared that adding another baby, especially so close in age, would mean that motherhood would swallow me whole. I was so afraid of losing myself to the physical and mental load of early motherhood twice over. Reaching my son’s second birthday, I felt like I was finally at the end of a marathon, and the thought of starting another was terrifying.

I had too much I wanted to do. So much I wanted to be. Could I still have these things and this new baby?

So, instead of daydreaming about tiny dresses and baby dolls, my brain went to a bad, defensive place, assuming the worst so I couldn’t be hurt even more. I invented all sorts of negative narratives about her obviously pushy personality and the challenging, fraught relationship we would surely have.

When she was born, she was beautiful—a beautiful, forceful bully. The second night in the hospital, she cried all night. What’s wrong?? I pleaded with the nurses. Cluster feeding. It’s perfectly normal. And she was so loud. At a few weeks old, she gave me tinnitus from her high-pitched wails. She didn’t sleep at night. I didn’t sleep at night. For months and months, she was whiney, clingy, and needy. An emotional Pisces, just like her Dad, I moaned.

But, eventually, she grew into herself. Turns out, we are both not really baby people. Today marks the third anniversary of my abortion, and in less than a week, it is my daughter’s birthday, almost one week apart. Like I’d suspected, she is tenacious. I mean, she started freaking people out in public by walking at 9 months old. She’s determined and bold. She follows her older brother everywhere, even if that means jumping off a cement wall. 

But she’s also so silly. She has a great laugh. She’s affectionate, cuddly, and nurturing to her truly disgusting stuffed Elmo. She’s a total stinker of a little sister who revels in being annoying. She wants pink everything. And gosh, she’s still so beautiful. Everyone stops to tell me so.

She’s everything and nothing like I thought she’d be. I’m everything and nothing like I thought I’d be with two children. With a daughter. With a loss, that isn’t socially acceptable to talk about. So, I guess maybe this is an abortion story AND a birth story, and the story of everything that happened in between.