Three

Britta tried to get pregnant for months. Finally, she did. Like....really pregnant. 

CW: This episode includes the graphic depiction of a termination of pregnancy at 28:39 - 32:10.

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Choosing is podcast about the choices we make and the routes we take to become parents. Are you grappling with the decision to become a parent, or have you become a parent via a non-traditional way? I'd love to hear your story. Get in touch: juliecensullo@gmail.com or via @choosingpod on Instagram. 

Choosing is written, produced, and sound designed by Julie Censullo. Editorial support for this episode by Rob McGinley Myers. 

Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, with additional audio from freesound.org. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, it's Julie. A quick heads up. This episode includes a pretty graphic depiction of a termination of a pregnancy. And I will leave the timestamps for when that's going to happen in the show notes. As always, this is a pro-choice podcast. So I don't say this to clutch my pearls at the concept of an abortion. I just like to let you all know when there's going to be mention of a major medical procedure. So if that's something that's going to make you uncomfortable, take a look at the show notes. All right, here's today's story.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Like in my early 20s, we lived in a duplex upstairs on the second floor. And then on the first floor was a family with like a two, three-year-old, and then they had a second baby. And I would come home like every day from work and play with that little girl, and it was like so fun. Like I really, I just like hanging out with kids. Brida also knew that one day she wanted kids of her own. But I didn't like think about it too much. I think I started thinking about it more when I was hitting my 30s and being like, okay, the clock is ticking a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Oh yes. I do know the clock. Part biological, art social construct, probably a lot social construct, fully annoying. Brida had been hearing the clock for a few years, but it always felt like something else in her life was louder. First, it was the fact that the relationship Brita was in, the one she was in for most of her 20s, ended. Then Brita met her new partner, a man named James, but their life kept getting interrupted.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

We moved across the country, and then it was the pandemic, and then like we wanted to wait to get married, but we couldn't have a wedding because it was a pandemic, and like there were just like things that were delaying it.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

By the time Brida and James got married and actually started talking about having kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

And then you start to do that math in your head, and um you start to get stressed. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

She began tracking her cycle.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

I think it's what it's called, like natural tracking, where you just take your temperature every morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Most people see an increase in body temperature around the time of ovulation, which dips back down when you start to menstruate. So if you're tracking your temperature and you see it go up and then back down, it likely means you ovulated, but you didn't get pregnant. Breda tracked her temperature for about seven or eight months. She still wasn't getting pregnant. She started to worry that she wasn't going to be able to conceive a child without some sort of medical intervention, like IVF.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

And I really strongly did not want to have to do any interventions because I had a really bad experience getting my IUD in and like with some hormonal and just like doctor stuff. And so I just was like really afraid that that's the route we were gonna have to go.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

But one day, Rita took her temperature and she noticed that it hadn't dipped back down.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

But my temperatures were staying up, which was really surprising to me because I was like, we're never gonna get pregnant.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Brita was skeptical, but she took a pregnancy test anyway.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

And it was too early to take a pregnancy test. Like it shouldn't have come up as positive.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

But it did come up as positive. In fact, it came up as positive right away. Which, of course, was exciting news, but in retrospect was a little strange.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

I remember being like, wow, it's crazy that I got such like an immediate strong positive. And then I thought about it and I was like, oh, I wonder if that's because my hormones were so high.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Brita didn't know it yet, but her hormones were already much higher than the average person's hormones this early in pregnancy. Brita's hormones were higher than average because this pregnancy, it wasn't average, which is something that Brita would soon find out. And this above average pregnancy would force her to make a choice that she had never even considered. I'm Julie Censulo, and this is choosing.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

I was really excited. Yeah. I mean, it opens up then all these, like, you're like, oh my god, you know, how are we gonna do this? And blah blah blah blah blah blah. But I felt like we had been trying for it and planning for it for a long time. So yeah, it was great. It was great. I remember James went and got flowers. It was like sweet.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

This was Brita's first time being pregnant. So she wasn't exactly sure what to do next. She called her doctor.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Like I called and said, I'm pregnant, and they basically were just like, cool, like, see you in a while.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Her doctor told her to take a prenatal vitamin and schedule her first appointment in a few weeks. And then Brida and James went about their lives.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Um, we did a trip out to California to see some friends, and we drove from San Francisco down to LA, and I think I like slept the entire drive. Um, but it didn't seem abnormal to me at the time because I think a lot of people experienced that. What was a little abnormal was I was like spotting a little, but it wasn't too bad.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

So isn't that alarming to have spotting during a pregnancy? Or is that?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

It can be. I think it wasn't like super alarming to me at the time because it wasn't a lot, and I like felt fine. But then what happened was we got home and like I woke up one day and I was still spotting, and then I just was so nauseous and dizzy that like I remember sitting on the toilet and like the room spitting, and I felt like I couldn't get up, and I was like, I think I need to go see someone because this like feels like maybe something's wrong. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

At this point, Brita estimated she was about six weeks pregnant. She called her doctor who told her to come in for an ultrasound.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

And we sat down to do the ultrasound, and the the ultrasound woman was like, so she said something about like maybe the fact that she was like mostly retired and just getting called in when they needed some extra help or something. So she kind of had this air of being like grandmotherly or like sort of old hand, I guess, sort of.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

This grandmotherly ultrasound tech moved her ultrasound wand confidently over Brita's belly, just like she'd done many times before. On the other hand, this was Brita's first ultrasound.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

I feel like once you've done ultrasounds, you sort of know what to look for. But we didn't know. We were just like, What I don't know what's on the screen.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

To Brita, everything on the ultrasound screen just looked like black and white, squishy blobs.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

And then she said something like, Did you guys do fertility treatments? And I was like, No. But that was like a weird question to ask. So I was like, Why did you ask that? And she said, Because there's three. Like that it was beating three times, or something, or something was wrong. And uh so I said something like three what? And then she was like, three babies.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

The reason Brita's hormones were so high, the reason she felt so exhausted and nauseous this early in her pregnancy, was because she was pregnant with triplets. Breda had what is classified as a tri-amniotic, trichorionic pregnancy. Each fetus had its own placenta and its own amniotic sac. This wasn't an instance in which a zygote had split when it was developing. Three separate eggs had been fertilized. Three fraternal triplets. Brida and James had gone months without getting pregnant with one baby, only to get pregnant with three at the same time. Breda looked over at James. He was stunned.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

James was like barely speaking. He was like, How are we gonna have three kids? And I was like, We're just not. Like, it's just not gonna happen. Like, there's no way we're gonna have three kids.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

What do you like? What did that mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

I don't know. I don't even know if I knew at the time, but it was like immediately to me, like, this is just not a situation that's gonna apply to us. But I don't even know that I was thinking about it that much.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

The ultrasound tech left to go and find a doctor who could talk to Brita and James. Other nurses kept popping into the room.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

They were all like coming in and being like, Wow, this is a totally natural like triplet, and it was sort of like it was like a tizzy, it was like an exciting day at the clinic.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Finally, a nurse told Brita that there wasn't a doctor who was available to talk to her at that moment. She told Brita to go home and that a doctor would call her later that night. Brita was panicking. How was she going to give birth to three children? How was she going to raise them? How was she going to afford them? Then she got a call from her doctor.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Right away, she was like, Are you interested in options to reduce this pregnancy? Which they wouldn't do anywhere. They wouldn't do like in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

In states where abortion is legal and protected, you have the option of reducing a pregnancy when you get pregnant with more than one baby. Which, to be more direct, means you have the choice to terminate one or more of the fetuses without terminating the entire pregnancy. It's important to note that Brita lives in Minnesota, which is a state with historically strong protections for abortion. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2023, Minnesota passed the Protect Reproductive Options Act, or the PRO Act, which removed all gestational restrictions on abortion. Now, personally, I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about abortion and abortion policy. But I had no idea that reducing a pregnancy was a thing you could do. I thought terminating one baby meant terminating them all. She believes that anyone should have the ability to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason. But what does it feel like to consider a reduction when this is a pregnancy that you really wanted? That you tried for so long for? The choice Brita was left with baffled me.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

When you have multiples, at least in our healthcare system, we got routed to what's called maternal fetal medicine, which is sort of like a higher level of care than a standard OB. It was like being in like the elite doctor's office. It was like a nicer doctor's office. It just felt like high-touch care in this way.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Breeda's doctor at the fancy clinic sat them down and started to explain the differences between what's called a singleton pregnancy, where you just have one baby in unero and a pregnancy in which you have multiple.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And I remember her showing this like these charts of like incidents of all kinds of complications, like for both the mother and the babies. And then twins, it was like a slight upward slope of incidents, like you know, a little bit. Basically, it's slightly riskier to have twins than it is to have one baby. And then when you went up to triplets, it was like a cliff.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Let me see if I can read all of these, gestational diabetes, anemia, excessive and severe vomiting, during adeny, hemorrhage, need for blood transfusion, possible hysterectomy, polystasis, postpartum depression, thrombocytopenia, which is where you have a low blood platelet count, which causes a whole host of issues, and hypertension. Carrying a triplet pregnancy also means that you will have more frequent ultrasounds, more office visits, a higher likelihood of prolonged hospitalization, and ultimately, if you live in a country with a for-profit health system like the United States, a much higher bill to pay alongside the birth of your precious children. And that's not to mention the higher risk of complication that exists for the babies. In triplet pregnancies, there are higher rates of congenital abnormalities, complications during gestation, and fetal mortality. This is all complicated by the fact that triplets are generally delivered at 32 weeks because it's too dangerous to carry three children to the full 40-week term.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

And a lot of people don't even make it that far. Like if you get to 32 weeks, my sense was you're lucky.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Babies born prematurely often require extra time in the NICU, which can lead to further complications and again further costs. Breda and James left their appointment with all of these statistics and facts and fancy words ringing in their heads. It seemed pretty obvious to them that they didn't want to have triplets. The risk was just too high to Brita and to the babies. Plus, the thought of coming home from the hospital with three newborns. Well, let's just say that wasn't the life they had envisioned for themselves. But now they had a new choice.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Did they want to have twins? And so, yeah, all of a sudden we had this like choice that a lot of people, like, even if you have a twin pregnancy, I don't think they offer you the option just like casually. Oh, do would you rather have one?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Of course, there was the possibility that the pregnancy would self-reduce. Breeta's doctor told her that vanishing twins or triplets are fairly common in the first trimester. A person will come in for their first ultrasound and see two or three heartbeats, but by the time they come back for their next ultrasound, one or more of the fetuses will have perished and they're still small enough that they're absorbed back into the womb. But each time Brita went in for an ultrasound, three heartbeats kept blinking back at her. Breda and James were going to have to make this decision on their own. There was one seemingly obvious way to make the decision. Maybe only one of the fetuses would be genetically viable enough to survive outside the womb. If that were the case, it would certainly make the choice easier. But genetic testing on a triplet pregnancy is complicated. Usually testing is performed by a simple blood draw from the mother. You can then differentiate between the mother's DNA and the fetal DNA and just test the fetal DNA. With three fetuses in utero, it's not possible to differentiate their DNA from a blood test.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

For multiples, it the challenge is if if a signature were to come up like Downs or something, they wouldn't know which fetus it belonged to. So they recommend a more invasive type of testing.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

This more invasive test is called chorionic villus testing or CVS testing. A doctor will insert a needle through the pregnant person's abdomen to collect a small amount of tissue from the placenta of each fetus and then test each of these tissue samples separately. In order for CVS to be performed, you need to wait until the fetuses are a little bit larger, usually at least 10 weeks. So no matter what their ultimate decision would be, Brida would have to remain pregnant with triplets for a few more weeks.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

And so we there was sort of this like built-in time for us to like think about it on the personal side of things. James, m my husband was like, we should gather information. And I initially was like, I don't even want to. Like, I just want to like sit with this.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

One in which she had twins, and one in which she just had a single child.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

I feel like it was like this impossible thing where I was weighing having twins or one baby, and all of the things involved in that, what that would mean for our life, what that would mean for the kids, what would you know, all of these things. But you're doing that without knowing what it's like to have a baby. Like practically, like, what would that mean for our car and our house and like what we would have to do for childcare and all that stuff, my job, but then also like, isn't it magical? Like, I know all these twins that have this like really deep and magical relationship with their sibling. Like, I didn't want to have, you know, have more than two kids, so like we would be done. Like that would be it, you know? Like, this would be it, and what would that feel like and look like?

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Breda wasn't sure if she ever wanted to be pregnant again. But if she only had one baby now, did that mean her kid would never have a sibling? Having twins could be an efficient, albeit incredibly challenging, way to have two kids at once. Breda read me one of her journal entries that she wrote during this time. Yeah, like here's the Okay, so this is for what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Okay, maybe it's the right choice for me to have one, not two, and I feel so paralyzed in making that choice. How do you make that choice? We could start walking down a rational route with financial planning and talking to people and all of that, but somehow I feel so stuck in that. Like I don't even want to take the first step. Because maybe I don't want to make a rational choice. Maybe I want to make a choice with my heart. But what does that even look like? And is that the dumbest thing I'll ever do?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Both Brita and James are trained as journalists. So they decided to conduct interviews as if this was a story they were trying to report on. They reached out to people they knew who were parents of twins to ask them about their experiences. Like good journalists, they tried to remain neutral during these conversations. They were careful not to ask for advice.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Also, this thing, like I was worried about talking to people who had twins. And then if we made the decision to have one, but then you'd be like, Thanks for talking to us. Based on your story, we decided not to go the route that you did.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Um person Brita talked to still hadn't been able to go back to work even several years after the birth of her twins. James emailed with a friend who wrote, We love our life, but it's chaos all the time. Another person they talked to was a woman who I'm just going to call Sarah. Sarah was a labor and delivery nurse. She told Breda that sure, delivering twins was easier than triplets.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

But she had seen the complications arising from twin pregnancies, and she was like, it's gotten a lot better from when like when I started working, but it's not it's not trivial.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Sarah was also the mother to twins herself. She told Brita and James that she loved her kids. But she was very Very blunt.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

She was just like, look, I always wished it was just one kid. It was just too much. They were born premature, they had some special needs, and she said she just felt overwhelmed. Like it just was so clear. And they weren't saying this in their words, but in the stories, like you like reflected on the stories, and you were like, this is a lot.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Having twins would be special. They knew that. But they also knew it wasn't what they wanted for themselves. They still had hope that the genetic testing would reveal some sort of abnormality in one or more of the fetuses, which would be hard, but would make things simpler. At ten weeks, Brida and James went in for CVS testing. When the test results came back, they had good news and bad news. The good news was that all three fetuses were genetically healthy and viable. The bad news was that the ball was back in their court. But by this point, Brida and James knew what they wanted to do. Was there any part of you that felt uncomfortable with the idea?

SPEAKER_02 23:51

It's interesting because I like one of the early conversations I had was with a friend who said something, like the language she used was like, if you can live with that decision. And I remember like after that conversation, feeling like there is something about that language that doesn't feel right to me. Like that's not how I feel about this situation. Like almost politically doesn't align with my feelings on this. The language I did find tough, just because like everyone's saying reduction all around you, reduction, reduction, reduction. And then you're like, okay, but it's an abortion, right? You know, but no one's saying that.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Technically, a selective reduction is a different procedure than an abortion. An abortion is usually performed by taking a pill like myfopristone or by surgically removing the entire pregnancy via the vaginal canal. A selective reduction, however, is a much more delicate procedure. There is a small risk, about 5%, but still a risk, of accidentally terminating an entire pregnancy during a reduction. Breda knew that by reducing her pregnancy, there was a slight chance that she would miscarry the remaining fetus. She read me another passage from her journal that she wrote shortly after she decided to terminate two fetuses.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Hearing all this, I felt so overwhelmed I couldn't stop crying for 24 hours. But then it turned out that there was one doctor who could do this, and he had like a family emergency. I think someone in his family died, and he had to go out to California, and so they postponed it.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Selective termination, again, is legal in Minnesota, but it's a highly specialized procedure. There aren't that many doctors in the state who can do it. By the time Brida's doctor returned, she was now 15 weeks pregnant. On the day of the procedure, Brida and James both took work off. They got coffee at their neighborhood coffee shop in the morning. Breda remembers they saw two monarch butterflies.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

And there was this little girl who had hot chocolate with this whipped cream towered on top who was um so excited to see the monarchs. And I remember we were like, I think we're both like a little sarcastic, but we were sort of like, it's a symbol. It's like two monarchs.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

They joked that the two monarchs were a sign of something, although they weren't sure exactly of what. Was it a message from the two babies they would never meet? Reassurance that they were doing the right thing? Was it a symbol of new life of the two of them embarking on the adventure of parenthood together? Or was it like every part of this triplet pregnancy just a lucky fluke of nature? They headed to the clinic.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

So we walked in, you know, they call your name, you go into the room. I remember feeling like I was too cheerful when I greeted them, and that the then the doctor and the nurses were very like serious, and me feeling like, oh my god, I'm acting weird. Like, I just remember feeling self-conscious of that feeling.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

The nurse led Brita and James back to a large exam room. This clinic was a teaching hospital. Breda knew there was a chance that her doctor might ask if a resident or medical student could shadow the procedure.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

And I had decided ahead of time that they didn't want to do that if they offered, because I had had some sort of not awesome experiences with that in the past.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

But when the doctor came in the room, he had a physician in training with him.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

And I just remember, like, I just made this like split-second decision that it was actually okay. And I remember thinking, like, it's okay because like we just had to have this procedure delayed a whole week because there was one doctor who could do it. And we need more doctors that can do this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Brita agreed to let the physician in training help with the procedure. Once the medical team had assembled in the exam room, the doctor had Brita verbally confirm what was about to happen. Brida wrote down what he said in her journal.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

I think he said something like this. This is what I wrote down. We call it a reduction, but that's a euphemism. Um, we're stopping the heartbeat, ending the life. Like you have to like verbally confirm that. And I wrote, I'm grateful for that because the language has been so hard to pin down. Um Yeah, I don't know why he did that. Like, I don't know if that's something that he is required to say, but it felt really important to me at the time that they did that.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

That's interesting that that felt you like because I feel like that feels a little intense. But you appreciated it.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Yeah, I think because like it I mean, at this point I was 15 weeks pregnant. I had been through a lot. We had made like a lot of difficult decisions, and um it I just felt like, yeah, I don't want to like beat around the bush. Like, this is what's happening, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Because all three fetuses were genetically viable, the doctor's plan was to terminate the two that were furthest from Brita's cervix. This is generally considered safest for the mother and the remaining fetus. Unlike a surgical abortion, a selective reduction is not performed vaginally. Instead, the physician, or in this case, the physician in training, inserted a long needle through Brita's abdomen. They had applied a topical anesthetic, but other than that, Brita was fully conscious. Using an ultrasound, the physician in training located the first fetus.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

I remember feeling like I shouldn't be moving. And I don't know if they I think they tell you, like, don't try not to move too much, but you're like in a lot of pain and they're like poking into your stomach. And then there was like a towel across my chest, and I was just like holding the towel, like just gripping it because it was like so painful. And you have to stay really still because they're doing this like super precise thing with a really long needle in your body.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

The physician in training inserted the needle into the fetal heart. Once in, lidocaine is fed through the needle. Lidocaine is a common anesthetic drug that is used all the time in dental offices to numb pain. But in the case of a fetal reduction, lidocaine stops the heart.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

After the first one, I thought they were done, and then it was like, oh no, that was just like the first one, and I was like, I don't think this is like too intense. Like I'm like really not doing okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

What was like not doing okay? Like, was it that you were just aware of it?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

It was very painful.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Brida's doctor could tell that the pain was becoming too much. Swiftly and calmly, he took the needle from the physician in training and performed the second reduction himself. While the needle was still inside Brita, the nurse in the room leaned over and said, She was like, Don't worry, it's over.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Like essentially, she told me like the abortion's over, even while they were still working. And that was I just remember feeling like that was really nice of her.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

For a long time, Breda didn't know how to talk about this procedure. She felt like she would black out every time she described it.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

I feel like I had sort of a delayed emotional reaction. I remember feeling like that some of the emotion I was feeling felt like it was like this overwhelming sadness that felt like really hormonal to me.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

It was hard to tell if this sadness was grief or just the massive fluctuation of hormones in going from being pregnant with three babies to just one. Most likely, she concluded, it was a mixture of the two. But despite the emotional toll of the reduction, the rest of Brita's pregnancy was relatively easy.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

What happens is then they bump you back down to like normal, like OB care. And the doctors were just like, oh yeah, like you have a singleton pregnancy. And I was like, no, like I need like more like um acknowledgement, sort of like what you we went through.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Her singleton pregnancy was no longer exceptional or unusual or something that nurses rushed into the room to see. It was just sort of average. But that doesn't mean it wasn't special.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Like the fact that we had a really lovely pregnancy was a decision that we made for ourselves. And it was nice sometimes to like remind myself of that, just in the like, everything doesn't have to be hard, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Six months later, Brita's son was born. Which was her second choice name for him. Um, so and we're calling him Oscar. So he is 18 months old. What is he like? What is tell me? What's he doing? Yeah, like what's he doing? What's he up to?

SPEAKER_02 34:19

He is really thoughtful, cheerful guy. He's just starting to talk, and um, he really loves applesauce and apples. Apple is his first word. Apple.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Do like do you ever have moments of looking at him and thinking like there could be two of these little guys?

SPEAKER_02 34:41

Well, it is funny because like he looks really like my mom's side of the family is Swedish. And when I was little, I had like blonde hair and I have blue eyes, and he is dark. He has like dark hair and dark eyes, and we took him to see my grandma, and she was like, Well, he doesn't look Swedish. And sometimes I think about the fact that like, because they were all fraternal, those were three separate eggs, three separate, so like you could have had very different looking kids. Sometimes I say that to James, like, what do you think they looked like? And he's like, I don't even want to think about it, you know. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Is that fun for you to think about?

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Like, is I mean, I don't think about it that much, but I just sometimes wonder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Do you still feel sadness? How does the emotion for this experience come up for you?

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Um, like I don't feel any regret. It's not like I look back and I'm like, wow, I think maybe we made the wrong decision. But it still feels like this like somber thing that happened in my life, you know? And so I don't I think that's hard to wrap even my own mind around because yeah, there's sadness and sort of grief, but it's not like a regret. And so what is that? I think that's the piece of it that makes me feel sadness or like question the decision still is like I just don't know if we're gonna have a second kid. And I grew up with siblings, and I know people that are only children who were desperate for siblings growing up, and I don't know how my son will feel about that. And so I would feel bad if my son was really wanting siblings and we didn't have any more kids, that then maybe there's like a knowing that you had the possibility of doing that. But I guess I would hope that he would have like enough respect for his parents to trust that they made the decision that was right for them.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Shortly after the reduction, Brida copied down a poem in her journal. The poem is called After All by Anna VQ Ross. Are you someone who often will like write down a poem? Like, is that a common thing you do?

SPEAKER_02 37:26

I no, not really.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

But something about this poem stuck.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Even when the garlic crop is good, something else is always dying. The peas withering in the afternoon, we hoped for rain instead of watering. The tomatoes overshaded. It should teach us something about pathos or fate, but really couldn't we have tried harder? Predicted the week of heat when the spinach bolted. The trouble with gardening is there's rain and wind and sun to blame. Like the woman in the buffer zone outside the clinic who spat at me and screamed, What kind of man is he to bring you here? While I held your hand and our daughter curled in her crib at home with the sitter. Afterward, I dozed against you on a park bench overlooking the city until I was ready to go back to work. But that's not gardening. And still there's the garlic, those round paper skinned heads you pulled this morning and carefully laid out to dry on the driveway's warm flat bed below our window.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

But it's you learn it? Like, do you?

SPEAKER_02 38:48

I do, but I think there's something where it's like there's something in this thing that's like, I did something wrong, you know? Like, should we have done something different? But this like metaphor that my mom said that always would come up almost to the point of like becoming a joke. But she was like, Honey, you're a gardener and nature produces abundance. Yes, like ten maple seedlings might come up, but like sometimes you have to pick nine of them to let the one grow. I I think that's an apt analogy. But that's actually funny because now every time I pick weeds in the garden, I'm like, huh.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Choosing is written, produced, and sound designed by me, Julie Cinzulo. Rob McKinley Myers provided editorial support for this episode. If you like this show, please rate and review it wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, send it to your friend who is also freaking out about what parenthood is supposed to look like. I am trying to grow this little show on a budget of $0 so that I can reach more people like you who are trying to sort through how we feel about having kids, and word of mouth is the best way to help this little indie show grow. You can also follow Choosing on Instagram at Choosing Pod. If you are considering parenthood or if you've become a parent in a non-traditional way, please send me a message. I would love to hear from you. As always, thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Growing up, we read these Scandinavian, I don't know if you these Scandinavian children's books that were Flick, Ricca, and Dicka triplets. There was Flickr Ricca and Dicka, the three girls, and then there was like flip flap flop or something that were three boys. And I remember at one point I said to my mom, but you know, as a joke, I was like, Well, you know, Flickka, Ricca, and Dickka were fine. And then she just like without a pause, just went back, honey, they had a whole village of support. Like it was like, um, yeah.