I have about 3 hours left in my shift at Best Buy and I’m hoping I can make it. I’ve had this horrible pain in my right side for hours and it has only been getting worse. I have to hold on to the display shelf a little more tightly when showing cameras to customers. While working for Best Buy has certainly had its ups and downs, being around cameras all day is just such a dream! I’m in my element, and I’m the expert at this store when it comes to all things photography, and everyone knows it. I remember one day a particularly rude man came in looking for a simple point and shoot camera and insisted on having a man sell it to him. Since I was the only one working in the department he had the general manager come and assist him. The general manager, an Indian man maybe in his forties named Satish, stood next to me while the customer only asked him any questions and only looked at him. But with every question, Satish looked at me and said, “Hmmm, I don’t know. Sarah, what do you think?” It infuriated the customer, but it made me feel believed in, and it made me want to work harder for him and the company.

As the pain in my side intensified, it became clear I was not going to make it to the end of the shift. I heard some chatter from the managers about wanting to call an ambulance, and while I was only 21, I knew that an ambulance would cost way too much, especially since both my house and the hospital were only a few minutes away. They convinced me to leave a little early, and someone drove me 5 minutes down the road to my house. I remember my parents both looking at me confused when I limped in so early. “I’m fine.” I kept insisting, “I just need to drink some water and to lie down.” After about 10 minutes of sipping water in the kitchen doubled over in pain, my mom told me that I might have a burst appendix and that we were going straight to the emergency room.

I was no stranger to the Skokie Hospital Emergency Room. If you blindfolded me and dropped me in any part of that ER I could get you back to the main entrance. I grew fast and stopped young. I never knew where my limbs ended, because a week before they were probably much closer to my body. When I was 9 or 10 getting fitted for a wrist or ankle brace from my latest injury, the nurses took me aside and asked if I felt safe at home, probably suspecting abuse since it was my third time in the hospital with an injury in the past year. I laughed and told them of course I was safe at home, that I was just a klutz and that I fell a lot. I probably should have told them my home wasn’t emotionally safe, but I didn’t know that was an option back then. 

When the intake nurses took one look at me they immediately took me back to a room. I knew right then and there that something must be seriously wrong with me. While getting me gowned, the nurses helped me give a urine sample, and seemed happy to see that there was no blood. They got me settled into bed and quickly got me started on a low dose morphine drip. Within about 5 minutes of being on the drip my pain completely disappeared. While drugs and I were no strangers, I had never been on serious pain meds like that. The thought of getting addicted always scared me, and I didn’t like the loopy way they made my head feel. 

But this time I didn’t care about feeling loopy, I was just happy to not be in pain anymore! I don’t know how long my mom and I sat there alone, but we were having a great time! We were cracking jokes, laughing about the situation, and she was probably laughing at how silly the drugs were making me. When the doctor walked in, I thought he was just a new friend here to hang out with us. Very casually, hardly even looking up from his clipboard, he said, “Well since you’re pregnant there aren’t a whole lot of meds we can give you and will want to avoid surgery at all costs.” 

My mom shot a look over to me, and my jaw fell through the floor, through the basement, and was hanging out with the mole people miles beneath the earth. This was definitely the first I was hearing of a pregnancy! I had gained a little weight and was eating weird, but I had just turned 21 a few months before, and I had assumed the weight gain and nausea was from the increased alcohol I had been drinking. Fortunately the morphine drip I was on was working quite well, so when the doctor offered to run a second pregnancy test, a blood test, I told him that he absolutely should, that I keep making blood and that he could have as much as he wanted. 

The time waiting for the results of the blood test was tense, but to her credit my mom never tried to lecture me on safe sex. She never yelled at me about making such a huge mistake, really never made me feel bad for being in this situation at all. She held my hand, told me she was here for me whatever my decision was moving forward, and reminded me over and over that I was loved.

I wasn’t that girl who always knew that she wanted kids one day. When I was little my mom took me to Toys R Us and let me pick out any baby doll I wanted. My grandmother was furious that my mom let me pick out a black doll, and I’m sure the people at my synagogue talked about me, but I loved that doll. I took her everywhere, but I don’t think that ever translated for me to wanting to be an actual parent one day. I liked my doll, I fed her, I played with her, and then when I wanted to do something else I put her in a box in my closet and went and played with other toys. 

When I was in middle school and high school I was never the girl taking care of others. When puberty hit I turned into a crazy demon child who thought the world existed for her. Sure I thought it was all about pain and suffering, but it was still all for me. Should that girl be a parent one day? Absolutely not!

When the doctor returned he confirmed that I was in fact pregnant, and pretty far along based on my HCG numbers, but that he wanted me to get an ultrasound before being discharged to confirm exactly how far and to make sure it wasn’t an eggtopic pregnancy. He was guessing I was about 12-15 weeks pregnant, and that if I wanted to discuss getting an abortion I had to make that choice very quickly. 

Was this real? Just a few hours ago I was at work with a pain in my side, with simple problems like selling enough cameras to meet a quota and where to go to drive to dinner with my boyfriend that weekend, and now I had to decide if I was going to bring another life into the world? How could I make a choice like this? I just turned 21, I was just able to legally drink and had been doing quite a lot of that the past few months, so what were the chances the baby would be ok anyway? The amount I had been drinking in my early pregnancy had probably hurt the baby, so ending the pregnancy would be more of a mercy to the baby, right?

My boyfriend was a great person, but how could I put something like this on him? He loves his gadgets and his car, and I want him to be able to spend his money on things he likes, not to have to take care of me and a baby. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I can take care of myself, but can I take care of myself and a baby? How do I even tell him that I’m pregnant? I think he’s great, but what if he gets mad and reacts poorly?

My home life was also not the best, and while my boyfriend was a great guy and would probably make a great dad, our combined Best Buy salaries were not enough to get a place of our own to raise a baby. We’d need so much help, and who would want to help us? I couldn’t raise a baby in my parent’s home. No more children should have to be raised around my father. He’s not a good man, and I didn’t want anyone else to go up around him.

While I’ve never really cared about what the people at my synagogue thought about me, my mom has always worked to make our family a prominent, well respected family in the Jewish community. I couldn’t do this to her. People would talk, people would judge, and that would hurt her too much. She’s been through so much between her poor health, my narcissistic father, and putting up with teenage me. She didn’t need the extra stressor of having an unmarried pregnant daughter.

By the time the nurses came in about 30 minutes later I had run through countless reasons why I couldn’t keep this baby, and came up with zero reasons to become a mother. There was just no way I was ready. It was still early, so an abortion would be simple. If TV and movies were right, I’d cramp for a few days, eat some junk food and watch some chick flicks in bed, and then it would be back to business as usual. Maybe I didn’t even have to tell my boyfriend? This will be fine. It’ll all be over soon. Let’s just get this ultrasound over with to confirm this pregnancy and then we can move on with the next steps of ending this whole nightmare. 

The ultrasound room was dark and cramped, with just barely enough room for the tech, my mom, and the hospital bed I was wheeled in on. It was quiet when the tech had me roll up my hospital gown to expose my belly and squirt some cold jelly on me. I couldn’t look at the screen, I was afraid that would make things too real, so I just focused on my hands. She put the wand to my abdomen and after a quick swirl around I heard it. 

It was loud, strong, and unmistakably the heartbeat of my baby. With the first flutter of sound I knew what I was going to do, I knew that I was now a mother and would protect that heartbeat with my life. I looked up at the screen and saw my little peanut for the first time and I held my breath. This was the first time I was seeing my baby and I had to remember every moment of it. 

That was it. I didn’t know how I was going to do this, none of the reasons why I shouldn’t or couldn’t be a mother had changed, but I had somehow become a different person in the few seconds of hearing my baby’s heartbeat and seeing that little peanut on the screen. In those few seconds I went from being ready for a abortion to knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would do anything for my baby. 

The next several months were the hardest of my life. None of those reasons I came up with for why I shouldn’t be a parent went away. I still lived in an unsafe home, and we still didn’t make enough money to raise a child on our own. I loved this child more than I’d ever loved anything or anyone before, and she wasn’t even born yet. 

My boyfriend and I went to what was essentially therapy throughout my pregnancy. They helped us talk through all the pros and cons of raising the baby on our own, and eventually helped us come to the conclusion that our daughter would get her best shot at the life she deserved by being raised by another family. 

While my boyfriend, the more pragmatic of the two of us, and the one not infested with copious amounts of pregnancy hormones, was fairly sure from early on that adoption was the right choice, I was never sure either choice was right for more than a day at a time. I can’t imagine a harder decision as a parent than to decide that your child should be raised by someone other than you. How could anyone ever love my child as much as I did? 

We found an adoption agency that did open adoptions, allowing us to keep in contact with our child and even choose her adoptive parents. We sifted through maybe 100 books prospective parents had put together and ultimately landed on a family we really liked. This would be their first child, and they had a vibe about them that just leapt off the page and made us feel confident they’d be the kind of parents we wanted for our child.

When we met in person it felt meant to be. We all had the same thoughts on her name, Lilly, conversation flowed smoothly, and when it came time to exchange contact information both men looked at their respective partners to take a pen and paper out of our purses. 

Illinois adoption law at the time said that the adoptive parents couldn’t take custody of the baby for 4 or 5 days after she was born, so Lilly came home with me. The agency had a nursery where she could have gone, but I couldn’t stand the idea of this baby spending any of her early days on earth without being held by someone who loved her. Did this make it harder to hand her over at the end of that time? Absolutely. Would I make the same decision again? In a heartbeat! I can sleep soundly knowing that I have done everything in my power to keep my first born child surrounded by love every second every day she’s been alive.

The day she was officially placed with her new parents and the days and weeks that followed were a blur. I remember there being some sort of small ceremony, and I remember crying a lot, but not much else. I struggled to stop lactating, so I had cabbage leaves in my bra for a while and I remember getting very sick and having my boyfriend’s mom take care of me. I didn’t want to go home and see all the baby things we had borrowed, so my mom was kind enough to return them all for me. 

As soon as I could manage I had a drink in my hand, and I didn’t go long without one for about 5 years. 

The depression hit pretty hard, and honestly it’s a miracle I’m still alive. Suicide was never the plan, but I put myself in some positions where subconsciously I think the prevailing thought was that if it happened, it happened. I’d frequently get blackout drunk at random bars, smoke weed with the strangers I’d befriend there, and then walk home or take the train or bus while completely messed up. My relationship inevitably came to an end, initiated by me. Ultimately I think he was the kind of person I needed to have in my life, but with the way I treated him, he deserved so much better. I was angry that he seemed to be so ok with not raising our child and I treated him terribly to punish him for it. I would disappear with friends I made at the bar and say some very nasty things as a way to punish him for forcing me to be without my child. It wasn’t until many years later I would learn just how hard it was for him, and that he was trying to be strong to support me. 

After about 5 years of sleeping around, drinking myself into a stupor, and making just about every wrong decision a person can make, I picked up and moved 500 miles away to Nashville where I knew nobody and thought I could get a fresh start. It took a little while, but after experiencing some more loss, making some fantastic friends, and a solo road trip that changed my life, I finally met someone that had the same views on life and wanted the same things I did, and we got married. 

About a decade after I was told the terrifying news I was going to be a parent, we began the harrowing journey to intentionally become parents. I once had no idea if I wanted to be a mother, but the years of grief from not being able to raise my daughter showed me that it was what I was meant to do. 

While my husband always knew he wanted to be a father, I certainly had my doubts when I was younger. But the second I heard that heartbeat in that dark Skokie hospital room it was no longer a conversation about what I wanted, it was a conversation about who I was. I was a mom who made the toughest decision in the world, and then would do whatever it took to get myself in the position to be ready for kids I could raise. 

I definitely did not always w

ant this, but now I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.