The Question I Keep Getting

It has been a long stretch between articles.

Not because nothing has been happening.

Actually, the opposite.

Life has been happening so aggressively that every time I think I have a second to sit down and write, something else needs me.

My daughter needs me.

The dogs need me.

My body needs me.

This pregnancy needs me.

My husband needs me, or more accurately, my husband’s schedule needs me to keep surviving around it.

And honestly, I am tired.

Deeply tired.

First trimester tired.

Pregnant with a toddler tired.

Resident wife tired.

Holding down the house while everyone else continues existing like I am some kind of emotional infrastructure tired.

For nine days, my husband was chiefing because two other residents had to go to a conference together and decided to tack on a little vacation in Utah.

And I know how that sounds.

Maybe it sounds harmless.

Maybe it sounds like something residents deserve because residency is brutal and everyone needs a break when they can get one.

And I do believe that.

Mostly.

But when the break requires my husband to absorb everything for nine days straight, it does not feel harmless from where I am standing.

He kicked ass.

Of course he did.

He always does.

That is part of the problem.

He has become the resident people know will take it. The one who can handle it. The one who will keep going. The one who will say yes, or at least not make enough noise when the answer should probably be no.

And while everyone else may see that as admirable, I sometimes see it differently.

I see the exhaustion.

I see the way he comes home depleted.

I see the way his body is present but his brain is still at the hospital.

I see the way “being reliable” can quietly turn into being used.

And then I am here, pregnant, nauseous, taking care of our daughter, taking care of the dogs, keeping the house moving, and trying not to fall apart because there is no room for that either.

So yes, it has been a long stretch.

I have not written because I have been tired in the kind of way that makes language feel like too much effort.

The nausea has still been coming in waves.

Some days I feel almost normal for a few hours, and then suddenly my body remembers it is growing a human and knocks me sideways. But lately, I have been feeling a little better. Better enough to get back to our big walks with the dogs and my daughter.

And those walks matter to me.

They are not just exercise.

They are sanity.

They are structure.

They are how I regulate myself when everything feels too loud.

They are how the dogs get what they need.

They are how my daughter sees the world beyond the walls of our apartment.

They are how I remind myself that I still exist as a person with lungs and legs and a body that can move forward, even when my brain feels stuck.

So I went walking.

The dogs were with me.

My daughter was with me.

I was pregnant and nauseous and still trying to act like a functioning adult.

And then something happened that has happened before, but still somehow caught me off guard.

A woman stopped to talk to us.

She was sweet at first.

She noticed my daughter, made faces at her, told me she was adorable, asked how old she was. It was the kind of conversation that happens when you have a cute toddler in public and strangers cannot help themselves.

I told her she (my daughter) was going to be 17 months.

She lit up and started talking about her grandchildren. She had several, some of them very close in age.

It was pleasant.

Normal.

Human.

Then I mentioned, casually, that my daughter was going to have a little brother soon.

And that is when the conversation shifted.

The woman looked at me and asked something along the lines of whether her family worked at the hospital.

Her family.

As in, not me.

As in, the child I was carrying around town, the child I feed and bathe and soothe and hold and worry over and love with my entire body, could not possibly be mine.

I looked at her and said, “We’re expecting.”

Then I clarified.

“She’s my daughter.”

And she brushed it off.

Not cruelly.

Not dramatically.

Just quickly, like she had made an innocent mistake and wanted to keep moving.

And maybe it was innocent.

That is the complicated part.

I do not think she was trying to insult me.

I do not think she meant harm.

But harm and intention are not always the same thing.

What stayed with me was not the exact wording.

It was the assumption underneath it.

Because this is not the first time.

When I first brought my daughter out into the world, an older white woman once asked me what family I worked for.

I remember that moment so clearly because it was one of those sentences that rearranges the room, even if you are standing outside.

What family do you work for?

Not, is this your baby?

Not, she is beautiful.

Not, how old is your daughter?

What family do you work for?

And now, here I was again, standing in another version of that same moment.

Only this time, the woman looked like she may have shared some kind of cultural or ethnic proximity to me.

And that made it even more interesting.

Because I think sometimes we convince ourselves racism, bias, or assumption only travels in one direction.

We imagine it as something one group does to another.

But people are people.

And people absorb the world they live in.

People inherit assumptions.

People internalize hierarchies.

People make snap judgments based on skin, names, hair, features, proximity, class, who looks like the mother and who looks like the help.

Even people who should know better.

Even people who may have experienced some version of it themselves.

And that is the part that stays with me.

Because I clearly present as brown.

My daughter is white-presenting.

She has her father’s coloring in a way that makes the world read her differently than it reads me.

And I knew this would be part of motherhood for me.

I knew there would be moments where people would hesitate.

Where people would look from me to her and try to make the math work.

Where I would be forced to explain something that should not require explanation.

But knowing something might happen does not make it hurt less when it does.

It is such a strange feeling to be erased while standing right there.

To be holding your own child and somehow still be questioned.

To be pregnant with another child and still feel like the world is trying to decide whether motherhood belongs to you.

And maybe some people will think I am being too sensitive.

Maybe they will say she was just making conversation.

Maybe they will say it was harmless.

And maybe, on some level, it was.

But when a harmless thing happens again and again, it stops feeling harmless.

It becomes a pattern.

A tiny fracture that keeps reopening.

And because I am pregnant, because I am tired, because my husband just came off nine days of chiefing, because I am already carrying too much, it landed harder than I wanted it to.

I went about my day.

Of course I did.

That is what mothers do.

We absorb the weird comment.

We adjust the stroller.

We keep walking.

We get home.

We feed everyone.

We wipe faces.

We refill water bowls.

We make lunch.

We check diapers.

We try not to spiral.

But later, when things got quiet, I kept thinking about it.

How many times will I have to say, “She’s mine”?

How many times will my daughter hear it?

How old will she be when she realizes people do not always see us as belonging to each other right away?

What will that do to her?

What will that do to me?

And now, with a baby boy coming, I wonder what this will look like with two children.

Two children and two dogs on a residency salary.

Two children needing me in different ways.

Two children who may or may not look like me.

Two children I will have to protect from the world and also prepare for it.

I am so excited for this baby boy.

I really am.

Even with the fear.

Even with the nausea.

Even with the financial anxiety.

Even with the terrifying logistics of wondering how I am supposed to keep working the way I have been while raising one toddler, growing another baby, managing two dogs, and trying to not lose my mind.

I am excited.

There is something surreal about slowly letting myself imagine him.

His little clothes.

His room.

His place in our family.

The way my daughter might react to him.

The way our house will feel louder and fuller and somehow more impossible and more beautiful at the same time.

I started a small registry for him.

And when I say small, I mean small.

I am only asking for three things.

A few things that feel a little more special, a little more beautiful, a little more thoughtful.

Things that would bring me joy to have for him.

Things that make this pregnancy feel real in a way I am still nervous to let myself fully feel.

We saved so much from my daughter, and I am grateful for that. I do not want more than we need. I do not want clutter. I do not want to pretend we need an entire new world of baby things when we do not.

But there are a few things I would love to have for him.

A few things that feel like his.

And if anyone feels moved to contribute, anything helps.

Truly.

Anything.

Because right now I am trying to figure out how to make all of this work.

How to bring a second child into a family already stretched so thin.

How to continue earning income when I do not see how I can work full-time the way I am now.

How to make residency finances stretch over two children, two dogs, groceries, bills, medical costs, and the thousand invisible expenses that show up the second you think you might be okay.

It is a lot.

All of it.

The pregnancy.

The exhaustion.

The race stuff.

The assumptions.

The loneliness.

The schedule.

The money.

The gratitude.

The fear.

The hope.

The way I can be walking outside on what should be a normal day and suddenly be reminded that the world may not see my family the way I do.

I see us clearly.

A mother.

A daughter.

Two dogs.

A baby boy growing quietly inside me.

A husband working himself into the ground because this is the life medicine demands right now.

A family trying to become something whole, even when the pieces feel scattered.

Maybe that is why I keep writing.

Because if I do not put these moments somewhere, they just live in my body.

And my body is already holding enough.

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UPDATED BIO August 28, 2026:

Hi, I’m Fiona — a writer in the midst of an unexpected chapter.

In April 2024, I lost my job. Since then, my husband and I have been getting by on his modest income as a medical resident. After stepping away from IVF, we were shocked — and overjoyed — to find out we were pregnant naturally. While it was the happiest surprise, it also brought new financial stress as we prepared for our growing family.

Then, our baby arrived early — on April 29th, 2025, instead of the expected due date in late May. With no paid maternity leave and no room in our budget for childcare, I’ve returned to part-time jobs and writing just a week after giving birth to help cover essentials like groceries, bills, and a few things for our 🌈 miracle baby.

If you’d like to support my writing — and by extension, our little family — your kindness would mean the world. Every bit helps: $1, $2, whatever you can give.

💸 Donate here — Venmo

🍼 🍼New Baby Registry — Or if you’d prefer to help more directly, we’re also gratefully accepting support through our baby registry — we don’t need much but we wanted to focus on items that will get our baby thorugh the years.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.