I don’t post a lot of very personal stuff on here, but I decided to share this story for two reasons. 1) people don’t talk about these things enough, and 2) she deserves to be remembered.

Many of you know that Brett and I were expecting our second child this spring. It was a girl, which I was absolutely over the moon about. I was meant to be a girl mom. It was a healthy pregnancy. She’d passed all of her prenatal testing. Our almost-two-year-old son, Miles, had started hugging my stomach every night before bed. We were finally past the miscarriage danger zone. I was starting to show and feel her move. My pregnancy app said she was now the size of an avocado. We’d told dozens of people and planned to officially announce in our holiday cards this year. I’d just gotten the photos back from the photographer. We were so happy and excited.

But at 17 weeks, less than halfway through the second trimester, my water broke. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We’d just finished dinner. It happened out of nowhere, and I knew it was bad. Everything after that feels like it happened really fast. Each scene still replays in my head like a movie. Within 30 minutes we were at the ER. We waited for what seemed like forever. They took my blood and did a sonogram. The sonographer had an incredible poker face. Actually she had a mask on, so they were technically poker eyes. I was admitted to the hospital.

Around midnight the OB on call was telling us I had no amniotic fluid left, and there was no chance of our baby girl making it to viability. Viability of a developing fetus generally starts around 22 weeks. Five whole weeks away. She said I could try to hold on for a miracle, but I’d be at strong risk for infection or other complications with each passing day. Even if I’d managed to stay pregnant for a month, something I was assured was impossible in my case, the outlook for a premie that young is incredibly bleak. Fetuses can’t develop properly without amniotic fluid.

By Monday afternoon I’d met with three OBs and a high-risk MFM specialist. They’d each made it clear, in their own delicate ways, that I was far more likely to die than to ever hold my healthy baby girl in my arms. They also told me that I was at risk of getting very sick, very soon if the pregnancy were to continue. The decision to terminate was devastatingly painful. But in another way it was easy, because I knew I had to protect my health for the sake of my son.

On the morning of Tuesday, November 29, Brett and I did the hardest thing we’ve ever done and said goodbye to our little girl. I had an abortion. It was a procedure called a D&E, which is a surgery done in the second trimester to abort a fetus or remove fetal tissue after a miscarriage. I’d never had surgery before. I was really scared. It happened to be performed by the same on-call OB who delivered Miles and basically saved my life once. My OB practice has like 12 different doctors, so this coincidence was strangely comforting for us. The doctors and nurses were all so good at their jobs. Everyone was so nice to us and respectful of our grief. I don’t think I stopped crying once that entire day.

I’m so glad I thought to ask the doctor to take her footprints for us. I’d asked her through sobs just before it started. Her perfect tiny feet are the size of my thumbprint. A nurse handed them to me as I was waking up after surgery. They gave them to me in this cheesy little box with a heart pin, a poem about loss, a little journal, a list of support resources and other things. They’ve probably given these boxes to thousands of families like us. I took most of these things out later and replaced them with her three sets of sonogram pictures, a little pink bow I’d bought, and a onesie I’d made her from my fundraiser. These were a few of the only things I’d gathered so far that were just for her. This cheesy little box from the hospital is now one of my most important possessions. And now I have this post to make sure you know about her too.

Because our little girl deserves to be remembered. And Miles deserved to keep his mom. Both things are true. It’s really really unfair that this happened. But amid all the pain and sadness, I am so thankful I was able to make this choice for us.

This brings me to the third reason I needed to share this story. One of the biggest silver linings of this nightmare is how incredibly lucky we are that this happened in California. The situation could have played out very differently if I’d been in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, or Wisconsin—all states with active abortion bans starting before viability. According to my doctor, and doctor friends I know in some of these places, I would likely have been forced to wait until the baby’s heart stopped or I developed a potentially deadly infection, with the latter scenario being most likely. Even if things happened quickly, there would have almost certainly been delays in my care due to legal oversight. Even once the procedure was approved, it might not have been easy to find a physician willing to take the risk of performing it.

If this had happened to me in one of these states, our 36-hour nightmare could have easily taken days or weeks. Days or weeks where I’d be physically unable to care for my existing child. Days or weeks of bed rest or hospital stay, putting my life at increasing risk with every passing day. Days or weeks of emotional trauma and delayed grief. For a baby everyone knows can’t survive. Maybe we would have flown somewhere else to get the care I needed. But I was in a medically precarious state, and not everyone can just fly somewhere.

Even though it happened quickly, this ordeal was already punctuated with so much waiting. Waiting in silence in the packed ER. Waiting for the doctor to come talk to us. Waiting for a bed to open up on the L&D floor. Waiting for the right time to tell our parents what was happening. Waiting for the Ambien to kick in while I cried myself to sleep alone in a hospital room. If this had happened to me somewhere else, there could have been so much more waiting. Days or weeks of waiting. Waiting for her heart to stop. Waiting for infection to set in. Waiting for lawyers and administrators to decide my life was at risk enough to be treated. Waiting to find a pharmacist willing to fill the misoprostol prescription I needed to prepare my body for surgery. Waiting to find a doctor willing to take the legal risk of performing my procedure. All because of some arcane law. A law written by men, not doctors, in service of a religion I do not practice. If this had happened to me in one of these states, it would have absolutely broken me. It could have actually killed me. And, after everything that’s happened, I can’t stop thinking about this fact.

So that’s all. That’s my story. Thanks everyone for all the calls, texts, cards, gifts, food, invitations to hang out, love, and support over this past week. We are unbelievably sad, and we probably will be for a long time. But the support of our family and friends has meant absolutely everything. Brett and I are so lucky to have each other, an incredible support system, a beautiful and healthy son, and to live in a place where women still have basic rights.

Also, if anyone wants to help me take my mind off things, my go fund me where I make stuff for donations to the Dr. Tiller Patient Fund is still happening. https://www.gofundme.com/f/ragecraft