Two years ago today, at 2:30 AM, on February 18, 2001, I woke up thinking that I had lost control of my bodily functions. I hurriedly waddled to the bathroom as fluid streamed down my legs. It took a minute for reality to kick in. I knelt at the bed and gently woke my boyfriend. “Chaz? Honey… my water just broke.” I sat at our dining room table as he called the doctor and my parents. Through my head, over and over: I’m not ready for this, I’m not strong enough. The final chapter was beginning.

     In mid-June of 2000, I started to feel, what I can only describe, as strange. I’d get dizzy, vomiting violently one moment and starving the next. This went on for a week before I went to an internist. I thought that what I was experiencing was just a continuation of prior issues. My menstrual cycle had never been predictable, so the red flare that should have been lit did not even begin to spark. Since I had been on the pill for years, the doctor wasn’t thinking pregnancy either. He told me to return to his office several days later for more tests. I can’t remember now what spurred me, but between those visits, I took an at home pregnancy test. I knew that the results would probably be inaccurate, due to the birth control pills, but I figured I’d try in any case. Two lines appeared. Pregnant. The doubt was still there. When I went back to the doctor, he didn’t even want to run a pregnancy test. He didn’t believe that I was part of the 0.01% of women who had become pregnant while on the pill. I asked him to run the test anyway. He may have been more shocked by the results than I was.

     Pregnant. Instincts of joy turned to feelings of dread. I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mother; it would have been unfair to the child to assume that I was. Pregnant. The word hung me, choked me. During the drive home from the doctor’s office, I did lapse into the clichéd reaction: giggling, feeling ecstatic, amazed, and shocked. Tears began streaming down my cheeks. I was surprised to realize that they were tears of excitement, tears of “What if?”

     Terror crept through me, as every main-stream-media negative-male reaction to such news played in my head. I should have had more faith. Chaz was a prince. He said all the right things, and held me at all the right times. We both knew that we were not in any position to raise a child. Neither of us had the financial means to provide all that we would insist on in a child’s life. As much as I knew in my heart that in many respects we could be wonderful parents, I didn’t feel that it would be fair to welcome an infant into lives as scattered as ours.

     The question began to bubble: what do we do? Prior to that moment, I had always believed that if I became pregnant before I was ready to support a child, I would have an abortion. An unexpected spark intervened. Slowly, growing in waves, the miracle of a life created in love overcame the pre-conception beliefs. We were in awe. Neither of us could stand the idea of ending the magic, which was the purest, yet most complex combination of us. We vowed not to make any rash decisions.

     A heart-wrenching month ensued, as we played out the pros and cons of our choices: abortion vs. adoption. Even the idea of abortion loaded the guilt on our shoulders; we’d feel heavy with sadness even thinking about what we would be ending through such a procedure. I felt so honored to have our genes dancing around inside of me that it was almost insulting to consider terminating this new life. Adoption would wreak havoc on my body and our emotions, and would end with… I guess I viewed it as an amputation of sorts, but our baby would come to life. We would be giving the greatest gift there is to parents who were unable to conceive. Should I tough it out for them? Should I end this pregnancy now? Back and forth, back and forth. By the end of July, we had settled on adoption.