Member-only story
Why Ava almost wasn’t (and the story of how my daughter came to be)
I was young and poor and living in NYC when I found out I was pregnant again. My first daughter was 9 months old when I found out. I was on the pill. I’d lost a bunch of weight. I was working constantly at a low-level job at an ad agency on Broadway. And I was on a subway, near tears, explaining the following to my husband who was working a temp job after being unemployed post-9/11.
“The doctor said I’m not very far along at all. There’s a pill you can take, and it ends the pregnancy”, I tried to deliver this to him with the utmost pragmatism and yet, inside I was totally devastated. I was not a teenager anymore or unwed or homeless or diseased. I had no real excuses for not having this baby, except for the fact that we were young and poor, and I was ambitious.
“Don’t do it. I mean, it’s your body. It’s your choice. But here’s the thing. I’m auditioning for Jeopardy and I could win like $25,000 and we wouldn’t ever have to worry again.”
I laughed. I cried. I dropped him off at 42nd Street and took the shuttle to my doctor’s office at Grand Central.
In Dr. Headley’s office, there were magazines I couldn’t read. My brain was racing. I went to the bathroom and stared at a body I had worked hard to regain. The thought about the woman in the mirror and the…