Not there’s a risk.
Probably.
A fourth pregnancy would probably kill me.
And if it didn’t, she said I’d likely spend most of it in a hospital bed away from the three children I already had.
My previous pregnancy had nearly ended badly enough.
There had been blood pressure problems, bleeding, emergency monitoring, and a delivery that turned chaotic very quickly.
The doctor didn’t dramatize it.
That made it worse.
I asked whether there was any version where another pregnancy could be considered safe.
She said no.
I asked again.
Different words.
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Same answer.
I asked twice more over the next two years.
No.
Eventually, James stopped coming to those appointments because there was nothing new to hear.
We had a name picked out.
Or rather, I did.
I’d had it since I was 19.
Clara.
James pretended not to be attached to it.
But once, years earlier, I found him writing it on a grocery receipt beside possible middle names.
He claimed he was testing pens.
Liar.
After the doctor’s warning, I packed away the newborn things.
Most of them belonged to the boys, but there were little neutral sleepers, blankets, bottles, and a bassinet sheet my mother had embroidered.
I said we should donate them.
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James said next month.
Next month became six months.
Then a year.
The box stayed in the garage.
Every time I suggested giving it away, he’d say, “Not today.”
Eventually, I stopped asking.
That’s what closing a subject looks like when it isn’t actually closed.
You just stop putting it into words.
The last time I let myself talk about having another baby, I cried.
Not because I disliked our life.
Because I loved it enough to know there was one version of it I would never have.
James took my hand.
“Our boys need their mother more than we need a daughter.”
He meant it, and I believed him.
I thought that was the end of it for the rest of our lives.
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Then, 11 years into our marriage, my husband stood at the end of a maternity corridor with his coat still on and his eyes red.
I had never once seen that man cry.
There was a plastic bassinet in the room behind him.
I could see the corner through the glass.
Something tiny moved beneath a pink blanket.
I stopped walking.
“James.”
He looked at me.
“I need you to sit down,” he said.
