Here’s something you don’t see everyday in the New York Times: an essay by a married woman describing how she unexpectedly got pregnant, wanted an abortion, and then changed her mind:

“I don’t want to leave Mexico,” David said. “I don’t want to give up on this before we’ve tried.”

“Why do we have to leave?” I said suddenly. “Why don’t we have the baby here?” It was my one olive branch, the sole place for compromise.

He shook his head. “The taxis don’t even have seat belts. I’d be a wreck driving around with you pregnant.”

“You already have been driving around with me pregnant.”

“You won’t be able to hike through the jungle,” he said. “Or climb the pyramids.”

“It’s not a disease,” I said. “It’s a pregnancy.”

“Where will we live?”

“We have nine months to figure it out.”

“What about your career?”

“People with children have careers,” I said.

As I said these things aloud, they sounded more and more plausible. What had seemed like the end of something just days earlier began to feel like the beginning of a different path entirely, one that would still involve visits to Tarascan Indian villages and treks into cloud forests, but would also include monthly prenatal exams and a new Spanish vocabulary, like the word for stretch marks (estrías).

David rolled over and gazed at the ceiling. The calls of men hawking tamales drifted in through our windows. He closed his eyes. I saw him envisioning us working and traveling in Mexico as three. “O.K.,” he finally said. “Let’s keep it.”

You’ll want to read the whole thing. I can’t wait to read the letters to the editor on this one.