My queasy stomach and swelling breasts were signs I couldn't ignore, no matter how implausible a pregnancy at age 50.
I tore open a box of expired pregnancy tests languishing in a far back cabinet. As I peed carefully on the plastic stick, I did some math.
"The baby will graduate high school when I'm 68. That's young!" My husband would be 78. "It will keep him young!"
The plus sign turned blue, confirming what my body knew but my mind wanted to deny. I peed on a second stick, just in case the first test was wrong. Another blue plus sign.
The travel, the writing, the yoga retreats, all the plans for my soon-to-be empty nest were replaced with thoughts of changing diapers, childproofing electrical outlets, packing lunches, and driving carpools.
I started to ponder names, Evangeline for a girl, after the Brandi Carlile song; Wallace for a boy, after his father.
I also panicked. I Googled "is it safe to have a baby after 50" and what I found was not very promising: "high risk," "complications like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, placenta previa, miscarriage," "older mothers more likely to suffer a stroke."
I also learned that the oldest mother to conceive naturally is Dawn Brooke, who gave birth to a son at age 59 in 1997, a story she delayed sharing publicly for a decade over fear of unwanted publicity.
When Maria del Carmen Bousada gave birth to twins through in-vitro fertilization at age 66, many called her "desire to be a mother selfish and irresponsible."
I felt ashamed. I wondered whether the better health choice might be to end the pregnancy.
At the same time, flooded with pregnancy hormones of promise and power, I felt prepared to push another life out of my body.
Thrilled, and terrified, I called my husband. "Remember how that psychic in Washington D.C. told me I would have three pregnancies?"
He was silent, and then slowly questioned with a bit of a laugh: "Yes?"
Suddenly something neither of us knew we wanted in both of our second marriages became the most important thing we could ever do together. As we walked the dog, we envisioned pushing a stroller.
Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno recently mocked women like me. He told a town hall, "especially for women that are like past 50 ... I don't think that's an issue for you."
I have news for him. Women past 50 still have sex, and become pregnant. I did.
Having babies at my age shouldn't be surprising or an occasion for shame. The current Republican presidential nominee was 59 when he became a father.
And even if the odds of a healthy pregnancy are reduced for women in their 50s, we should all care about reproductive healthcare for our daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, and ourselves.
I called my ob-gyn's office the morning after the positive home pregnancy tests. "When was your last period?" July 4, coincidentally our wedding anniversary.
The receptionist started scheduling my first visit with a doctor for the following month. "Shouldn't I see the doctor sooner?" I questioned. "I'm 50 -- as in five zero."
She immediately transferred me to a nurse, who directed me to a lab for bloodwork that afternoon and booked me with my doctor 48 hours later.
Pregnancy hormones detected in blood are more precise than urine. I was five weeks pregnant, with a strong level of the human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG).
The nurse called me that night, said this was good news, and recommended that I begin supplementing with progesterone, given my age, to help the embryo develop.
The next step was an ultrasound. When my son was born two decades ago, I needed help resuming ovulation after several years of birth control pills. I saw him on the monitor at about the same time, five weeks, a blip of white on a screen of grays and blacks.
He's now a grown man, taller than me, studying international relations at the University of Michigan, and writing crossword puzzles for the newspaper.
I knew something was different this time when the technician didn't point out anything on the screen. My doctor walked into the exam room, carrying a diagram of the uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes.
"Have you heard of an ectopic pregnancy?" she asked. "It looks like a fertilized egg implanted in your left fallopian tube. And it can't survive there."
The miracle in my womb was now a ticking timebomb. "This is a dangerous situation," the doctor explained. "If it isn't removed, it will burst and cause internal bleeding. When that happens, it is life-threatening."
I work as a law professor at the University of Houston in Texas, but I am a legal resident of Michigan because I share custody with my children's birth father.
While I spend too much time on airplanes, this arrangement is best for my kids. As it turns out, it also saved my life, because my health care providers are based in Michigan.
Had I visited a doctor in Texas, I might well have been sent home to wait for the egg to explode and bleed out.
Kyleigh Thurman was initially denied care at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas for her ectopic pregnancy. After three days of bleeding, the egg growing on her fallopian tube ruptured, destroying her reproductive system.
Two days after the ultrasound I found myself at the same Michigan hospital where I'd given birth to my daughter sixteen years ago, but this time being wheeled into the operating room for laparoscopic abdominal surgery.
As the nurse stabbed an IV needle into my arm, I thought about women like me who need this procedure but are told they must wait until it becomes even more deadly.
I would later learn that, after making three slices in my belly to insert a camera and inspect my fallopian tubes and ovaries, the surgeon found them to be completely normal. There was no ectopic pregnancy.
Instead, the surgeon diagnosed a molar pregnancy, a condition involving an abnormal growth of cells that can become a fast-spreading cancer in the liver and brain if left untreated.
Because the cells were located in my uterus, I needed a "D&C," otherwise known as dilation and curettage -- an abortion.
"Why do I feel like I just gave birth? I'm in so much pain."
Tears streamed down my face as I looked to the recovery nurse for an explanation. The last time my body experienced such trauma it was numbed by holding a healthy baby in my arms. She gently explained what happened during the surgery.
In Texas or the many other states that ban abortion and do not include exceptions for the health of the mother, I might have been sent to a parking lot to wait for heart or organ failure.
That's what happened when Jaci Statton received the same molar pregnancy diagnosis in Oklahoma.
After directing her back to the car, staff advised: "We cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack."
Jaci went to three different Oklahoma hospitals before finally seeking an abortion in a state where it is legal. She drove to Kansas, three hours from home, to find a clinic.
Many women can't afford that trip, and no one should have to make it in this condition.
Other women with preventable pregnancy complications like mine have died -- and simply because they reside in states without health protections like those secured by a recent Michigan constitutional amendment.
Amber Nicole Thurman needed a routine D&C when fetal tissue failed to expel fully after she took abortion pills in 2022.
But a Georgia law made the procedure a felony, with limited exceptions, threatening physicians with up to a decade in prison. So 20 hours passed as an infection spread and organs failed before her surgeon operated.
She didn't survive, and left behind a 6-year-old son.
Carmen Broesder endured a painful, nineteen-day miscarriage with severe blood loss and erratic blood pressure before an Idaho hospital would treat her. Her heart suffered irreparable damage.
An otherwise healthy 35-year-old now lives with atrial fibrillation, at risk for a stroke.
The only thing more shocking to me than becoming pregnant in my fifties is becoming part of the 1 in 4 women who receive an abortion, per Guttmacher Institute research.
I never thought it would be me. I was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1973, the same year Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. The only child of Southern Baptist evangelicals, I was raised to believe abortion is a sin no matter the reason for it.
Since the 1970s, abortion has been framed as a matter of women's autonomy and choice. However, my abortion was everything but a choice; it was a matter of life or death, and only one life -- mine.
The national dialog is appallingly simplistic about the "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life" debate. Abortion rhetoric fails to capture the complexities and complications of conception, and it wrongly contributes to the shaming and blaming of women.
Lawmakers don't understand basic biology, and they don't sympathize with the emotional trauma a devastating diagnosis inflicts, especially in states that provide no sanctuary.
This binary debate also silences meaningful discourse about women's health. I never learned about the dangerous risks of ectopic and cancerous molar pregnancies, or that abortion is a safe procedure not only to save a woman's life but also to preserve her reproductive organs for future healthy births.
This certainly wasn't part of my high school sex ed curriculum. I wasn't counseled about it at my annual well-woman exams over the decades.
I may still need preventive chemotherapy as I recover. The protocol after an abortion for a molar pregnancy is to monitor HCG levels to make sure the cancerous cells do not spread. Each week I return to the lab, another needle in my vein. My bloodwork will be monitored for at least six months.
In the meantime, I am grateful for the abortion that I never wanted and didn't choose, but allowed me to continue living.
It's outrageous that, according to The New York Times, 1 in 3 women live in places where they would not receive the same life-saving care I did. Life and death shouldn't be arbitrarily determined by geographic borders.
When politicians say "leave it to the states" they mean "leave women to die."