Our Baby

The News

I was on my couch straddling and making out with Blake when I told him the news. 

“I have something to tell you,” I said in between kisses. He’d come over after a night out with his friends, or his “mates,” as he calls them in his UK vernacular. 

“What now?” he asked, already worried.

“Get excited,” I said with a laugh. “I’m pregnant.”

I’ll be honest — I got a kick out of saying it to him. Based on our past conversations I knew he wasn’t ready for a kid, and I’d already decided to terminate the pregnancy. I just wanted to see him freak out a little.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise; Blake knew I wasn’t on birth control, and we’d been having unprotected sex for two months. 

I told him not to worry because I wasn’t keeping it, and said he was lucky I’m not one of those women who “traps” men. 

I imagined he’d be in shock initially, and that it would quickly be followed by relief. But his reaction caught me off guard. He nearly froze before standing up with an incredulous look on his face. 

“Do you want to see the test?” I asked. I scurried into the bathroom, pulled the stick out of a drawer, and presented it to him. There it was. Our potential future spelled out on a digital display clear as day: Pregnant. 

“It’s mine?” he asked with an affirming nod. It was a fair question because we weren’t in an exclusive relationship. 

Here I was on a family vacation in the midst of my deliberation, at around 6 or 7 weeks pregnant

“You’re the only person I’ve had sex with all year,” I assured him. 

As the night went on he became more relaxed in our ongoing conversation about it. We agreed we’d both prefer a boy. He started dropping terrible baby names like Alfie, Archie, and Noah — monikers I’d never assign to any child of mine. For a few hours we existed on an alternate plane, a realm where we could entertain idyllic fantasies about parenthood. 

Our sex was different for me that night. It felt more intimate knowing there wasn’t just us, but also a tiny ball of energy between us in the form of the seedling we’d created. 

The next morning our daydreams gave way to reality. Before Blake left my apartment he said, “We need to talk. Seriously. Don’t do anything without talking to me, please.” 

It caught me off guard because I thought the obvious next step was to plan the procedure. What more was there to discuss? I didn’t expect him — the guy who couldn’t even commit to a relationship — to care so much.

A couple of hours after he left I got a text from him asking, “So what’s our plan?” 

I quickly replied, “I’ll schedule an abortion.” He wanted to know how far along I was and asked if I’d get an ultrasound. It was the second time he brought it up. I told him I would, as it’s protocol before terminating a pregnancy. 

When he asked again for a third time, I realized he was struggling with the idea of an abortion. I also realized I’d never actually asked if he was okay with it. Before that point I’d just assumed he’d be detached from the whole thing. I thought he’d be grateful I was handling it. His response made me question my next move. I wondered, could I actually have this baby?

Father is a Label

I told some of my friends and some of my family that I was expecting. They became my panel of confidants to help me deliberate. I’d been pregnant before but, for the first time, I was imagining what my life would look like if I kept my baby.

When I discussed my options with one friend, she reminded me what Blake had told me weeks prior — that he didn’t like “labels,” didn’t believe in marriage, and was a “free bird.” He’d said it under the context of dating and relationships but my friend brought up a good point. “Father is a label,” she said, and asked me if I could see myself raising a kid alone.

At the time, I didn’t have a full-time job. I considered that I’d be an unemployed, single, Black mother and I winced at the idea of becoming “a statistic.”

My aunt pointed out that with Blake’s roots being overseas he could jump ship at any point, leaving me on my own with the kid.

When I talked it over with one of my sisters she told me that even with a supportive, present partner, mothers naturally pull more weight.

They were all valid arguments.

Logic Over Emotion

Children are walking, breathing self-portraits. I wondered how our collaboration would present itself. I looked up the likelihood of our baby having my brown eyes or Blake’s blue ones (it was 50/50). I thought about whose smile he would get. I even picked out the name Levi... until I realized it was an anagram for ‘evil.’

I pictured myself in the hospital bed after giving birth — holding our baby, crying, and laughing with Blake about how crazy we were for going through with it. 

After Blake showed he was invested in the future of our fetus, I briefly reevaluated what I wanted to do. There were several big factors I looked at, one of them being the fact that we had just hit a sweet spot in our relationship. We were closer than ever, having more fun than ever, and I didn’t want to strain our budding bond.

There was my career that was getting off the ground, as well as Blake’s business pursuits, which had taken a hit with the onset of the pandemic. 

And finally, of course, there was an anonymous woman across the pond who was counting on her partner not to bring a child into the picture (when I mentioned her, Blake responded by saying, “I make my own rules”).

As apprehensive as he was about the abortion, ultimately Blake didn’t want me to have the baby either, and that was the deciding factor. At one point he sent me a picture of his dog and said, “This is all I can handle right now.”

I would’ve loved it if he said, “We can do this. Let’s do this.” It would’ve been the adventure of a lifetime. But while it was nice to idealize raising a baby with Blake, I knew I had to come back down to Earth and be practical. 

In the end, it just didn’t make sense.

Post-procedure

On the day of the surgery I found out I was seven weeks and six days pregnant.

The last photo I took before my abortion

The hours after the abortion were spent at the intersection of mourning and celebration. It was bittersweet. There was a quiet sense of loss, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also feel relieved. 

It also felt great to have grown closer to my “mate” throughout the weeks we were figuring things out.

Over beer, rosé, and an Italian meal we toasted to “making hard decisions,” as Blake put it. “To making a mess and cleaning it up,” I added not-so-eloquently.

As we dined al fresco at the trattoria Blake took my hand in his and kissed it. We’d unlocked a new level of our relationship. 

We no longer had our baby, but we had each other.