Mamihood in Queens: Pregnancy

Pregnancy loss; having a baby "NYC young" and the number one group of women having abortions

Disclaimer: Queens is a borough of parents, with 20% of its population under 18. The following is just one account of mamihood in the world's borough—my account. My story of pregnancy, told in four parts, touches on abortion, pregnancy loss, and IVF, which might be tough or emotional for some readers. Please take care of yourself, and feel free to skip.

“If we trust people with the possibility of bearing and or rearing children we can of course trust them with the decision not to.”

- Gina Rushton

16 and Pregnant

The first time I was pregnant, I would have been eligible for an MTV audition for 16 and Pregnant—except it was 2002, and the show had yet to be created. I found out after my first OB appointment, the one I was responsible enough to make on my own, but responsibility doesn’t inoculate you from mistakes. My doctor who resembled Albert Einstein with white hair sticking up as if he rubbed a balloon on his head, said, “I want to do an ultrasound, is that okay?” This was after my vaginal exam and I assumed it to be a routine next step. “You see this?” he gestured to the screen. “Did you know you were pregnant?” I didn't. He said I was about 11 weeks, a number that meant nothing to me. Despite sex ed classes where you learn more about abstinence and pass around laminated photos of what STDs look like on genetalia, I didn’t know pregnancy was 40 weeks and I was nearing the end of my first trimester. I dressed, pulling up my teenage outfit of tight jeans, sweatshirt and Timbs, grabbed my coat, and headed to his office where he wanted to discuss next steps.

We chatted through options. There was only one in my mind. Termination. I was going to join the military and maybe one day go to college. I was babysitting my nieces often, feeling the relief of being able to pass them back to their mother, my sister. The procedure would cost $300 out-of-pocket, and he’d list something else on the insurance documents so my mom wouldn’t find out. We made a plan and I’d come back in a week but would have to take off a day from school after the abortion. He’d write me a note so that my absence wouldn’t be flagged. He was kind, never patronizing. This was healthcare.

The week would buy me time to figure out how the hell I was going to pay for the procedure. I had money, but was about $100 short. I asked my sister. Thirteen years older than me, she was dealing with parenting two children, a full-time job and a less than supportive partner. That stress prevented her from being able to show up for me or at least that’s what I told myself years later or maybe in that moment, I can’t remember. She wouldn’t tell my mom she offered, but I would have to find another source for the money. I had to ask the guy.

2001; High school me with the angst to match.

This guy wasn't even a boyfriend. We slept together a few times. He was 18 or 19, worked at a Duane Reade and rented a room in East New York. He was nice enough and was saving money to leave Brooklyn. I was such a stickler for condoms at that age because I was so afraid of STDs. Some of my sister’s friends had died from AIDS. Relatives had died from AIDS. It was all over the news in the 90s and on Oprah and Sally Jesse Rafael which aired at 4pm right as I was getting home from school. That was not going to be part of my story, so I used condoms with the two partners I had before the Duane Reade guy. But one time I didn’t and there I was, asking him for $100 by the deodorant. He was short on cash, but he’d find a way to give it to me before the week’s end. Could I wait till Friday?

Two days before my appointment - this was all going to be over soon - I was distracting myself through basketball. Using my body to take charges, my sweaty back hitting the floor. It was likely due to my vigorous playing that I hadn’t realized missed periods in the first place. By Sunday I was spent. That night I awoke to a warm, bloody mess between my legs. I sat up and immediately felt the worst cramps of my life. There is no accurate way to describe a miscarriage at this stage of pregnancy without gore, so I will spare you reader. And if you’ve been there, my heart breaks for you, because whether you wanted a baby or not, it is terrifying. My mother was downstairs sleeping in our landlady’s apartment since she required round the clock care by that point. Thankfully I could cry and scream and not be heard. I sat on the toilet for what felt like hours and then went back to bed. The next morning I told my mother I had my period and wasn’t feeling great. She had bad periods so she understood and I was able to stay home from school. I called the doctor’s office. It was over I said. “You still need to come in,” the nurse said. I needed a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure to make sure there wasn’t any remaining tissue which could lead to an infection. They could see me immediately. My sister who was driving into Manhattan for work said she could pick me up and I could walk from her office to have the procedure done. She was sorry she couldn’t go with me.

I walked into the office, brought into a sterile room, put on a gown. The crying the previous night was prompted by pain, but the loneliness, the sadness of it all hadn’t triggered a tear. I did want to be a mom one day. I had friends who were already mothers, their own 16 and pregnant stories, but I knew I was making the right decision for myself. As the speculum went in and I felt the cold of it all, I cried. The nurse held my hand and I am sure my face has remained with her, the way hers remains with me.

While this experience was not short of trauma, it was an example of dignified access to healthcare. In 2001 there was 5,084 teenage pregnancies in Queens with 3,062 choosing abortion. I wasn’t alone after all. This would not be the last time abortion would touch my life.

29 and Pregnant

We had spent the first year of our marriage exploring the world. Provence, Cartagena, the World Cup in Rio. Waking up on the floor of our friends’ Williamsburg apartment together after a rowdy night at House of Yes was a particular thrill. We were having fun, working hard, and enjoying one another; the things all the seasoned married couples told us to do, “before you start a family,” as if we weren’t already a little family.

It was October in Cartagena on Matt’s 30th birthday when we started “trying.” There were several family members who struggled to conceive and thinking that could be our reality, I wanted enough time to “try” before I was 30. My endless yearning for control made its way into our bedroom, but I wasn’t quite tracking basal temperatures. I had ovulation sticks and a calendar, the apps weren’t as good as they are now back then. What I thought would take six months to a year, took all of two months.

Sept 2014 on my way to a softball game; Just two months later I’d be pregnant

I was visiting one of my best friends and his girlfriend in Seoul. Soo treated me to a scrub and dinner at the jjimjilbang. The next day, after a night of soju, we dined on low tables and pillows, slurping bowls of steaming Haejang Guk for lunch. While Peter and Soo worked, I walked all over Seoul enjoying the days of travel where you could just happen upon something. I listened to music, envisioning what I’d look like with a pregnant belly, what kind of mother I’d be, what kind of father my husband would be. But I also worried about what if I couldn’t get pregnant and how a baby would completely alter my life forever.

Because it always comes back to food, my fave dish in Seoul.

My last few days in Seoul I pampered myself. Three-dimensional nail art; brown, natural eyelash extensions at a little shop in Itaewon. I took a weekend trip to Kyoto where I walked in the rain to temples, leaving donations for Omamori (amulets) protecting fertility and family. In Japan, I woke up on a floor mattress after deep sleeps and ate the softest tofu for breakfast. The afternoon I arrived home from the trip to our Jackson Heights apartment, Matt was at work. He came home late that night from a work event to find me fast asleep. I woke up a few hours later to see him sleeping and despite the late hour, I was wired. In my jet-lagged state, I peed on a pregnancy test. It was 2AM when I woke up Matt to tell him I was pregnant.

I spent the next nine and a half months doing everything to learn about infants. Although I held and changed and fed my nieces at weeks old, I wanted a refresher. My pregnant belly went camping, to many 30 year old birthday parties, 10k runs. My pregnant belly grew in front of my students who couldn’t believe I was pregnant. “But aren’t you like, young?” they asked. In 2014, the average age was 32 in NYC for first-time married mothers. I guess I was young, but I felt ready to care for someone other than our dogs at the time, Sonny and Bianca. Leo arrived five days after I turned thirty at 6lbs,7oz. My nieces were both born over ten pounds, so when the nurse placed this little, wrinkly thing in my arms after a 30-hour labor, I was scared to break him but knew I wouldn't.

So tiny, my first born.

I felt my family to be complete in that moment and for years after that, and then he was four and I could be convinced to have another one.

34 and Not Pregnant, But Wanting to Be

Leo was in pre-school when COVID hit and I turned into a full-time teacher by way of remote schooling. Matt and I had talked about expanding our family at the beginning of 2020. In the first week of March before the madness, I went to a fertility clinic just to make sure all was good. It was the best one, so good they did not take insurance as to not convolute their process. The flagship location was in Colorado and they had just opened the NYC office in 2019. At the blood draws, the ultrasounds, the hysterosalpingogram, a painful test to confirm that your fallopian tubes are clear, I felt like the only Latina in the space. The world of fertility is overwhelmingly rich and white. The offices and their pamphlets wreak of venture capitalist investments. This is a business. You are what you pay. Egg freezing and IVF are more costly than IUI but providers are supposed to recommend the best course of action and aim for the least invasive route to success. I did not have that experience.

Two days after learning my IVF cycle produced exactly zero viable embryos.

I did not hear from the fancy clinic until late April with my results of the tests. The practice was left reeling from office closures and an indefinite pause on all non-essential medical procedures, because a woman at 44 hoping this round works, is a not urgent according to whomever was making the COVID guidelines at the time. I was told that I had a mildly blocked tube. There was my answer. IUI or trying naturally would likely never work she said. We had to do IVF. Reader, I won’t bore you with the details except to say that we paid the equivalent of a year’s tuition at a top school for an unsuccessful round. I remember the doctor saying, a next round would increase our chances. This was a game of odds. “I have a child that I need to worry about. How do people pay for this, anyway?,” I asked. I could take out a loan or ask family members, she recommended. It felt like signing up for a multi-level marketing scheme.

October 2021 and happy to be very pregnant with two dogs on our unmade bed.

After a second and third opinion, I learned that my fallopian tube was not blocked. “This is so insignificant, I would not have even mentioned this to you,” a doctor said. After one more try, with a practice that took my husband’s insurance, because I would not have done it again otherwise, I was expecting. We ate ramen, the night I went into labor with our second child, enjoying the last few bits of life as just the three of us. Our oldest was six and in 24 hours he had lost his front tooth and became a big brother.

November 2021; brothers meet.

38 and Pregnant

I should have been excited. After dealing with infertility treatment for nearly three years, I was pregnant from sex, no ass injections required. I also had two kids and three had never really been part of the plan. I was traveling, sometimes weekly for work, at a company run by good ole’ boys. They were in the midst of firing their DEI leader convinced they had done enough to improve inclusivity throughout their ranks. “We’re proud of our commitment to diversity since 2020 and will be refocusing our DEI program,” a company announcement read. I was so ready to leave corporate marketing, excited to work in urban agriculture, but terrified by the pay cut. All this to say, I was thrilled to get pregnant on my own (fuck that pendeja who told me otherwise) but I did not feel ready to mother three souls.

Let’s talk about the US media’s abortion narrative for a second. Even the democratic campaign’s political ads around abortion make it seem like the choice should only be presented in abusive or life and death scenarios. In the United States, about 60% of patients who have abortions are already mothers and half of them have two or more children and yet, abortion is consistently touted as the option to be preserved only for the desperate.

It was very early on in the pregnancy and a pill was delivered to my home on the same day a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas suspended the approval of mifepristone. Mothers are supposed to sacrifice, women who have abortions choose themselves is how the rhetoric goes but it was my children I was thinking of when I induced the process. Community is not structured in the way it was when I was growing up, where my mom could call a friend to pick me up from afterschool if she was running late at work. Childcare everywhere, not just in NYC, is oftentimes unavailable or cost prohibitive. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)., “between January 2020 and September 2024, the price of day care and preschool rose about 22%.” This is not me justifying a private family decision for Substack but we would be ignorant to think that cost is not a factor heavily considered in family planning.

I understand the reticence to share stories like mine, which to be clear is not extraordinary. We do not know how many moves we are from a Handmaid Tale’s reality. Those in states with very restrictive abortion policies may already feel we are there. To say this decision came easily would be a lie. Even in cases of desperation as in my own teen pregnancy, the choice was simple, but it was never easy.

My husband and I have mourned our decision. It was our choice, a private matter, undeserving of judgement, scrutiny, and certainly undeserving of imprisonment. It was our way forward as parents, as partners, as professionals. As we approach a caricatured presidential election with real consequences for many, I defend my choices and every person’s choice around pregnancy. As journalist, Gina Rushton, shared, “If we trust people with the possibility of bearing and or rearing children we can of course trust them with the decision not to.”