All therapy rooms are the same but different, I know that, yet Christian’s should feel familiar by now. It doesn’t. Something has changed. I look around the room, at the throws over the chairs, the jade cushions, the books on the shelves. Same titles, same human problems. I half considered going to seek the help of a new therapist, start afresh. But I can’t face repeating the bland facts detailing my early life.

So, here I am, back with Christian. It’s comforting. I’m out of sorts and I can’t seem to find the right words, despite his familiar presence making me feel safe. I’m vulnerable, so much so, that if someone is too nice to me, I will crack. He isn’t the overly sympathetic type, and I need that right now.

I tell Christian about the helplessness I felt during Jack’s birth, the anger at losing control, the avoidable indignities, the rage that won’t go away, the pregnant women I want to warn, yet can’t because I don’t want to frighten anyone. How I feel duped by the classes I went to prebirth that misled by discussing calming playlists and aromatic oils. There was no mention that some women will have no choice but to accept drugs and medical intervention. No balance, however well intended. How I’m amazed that the human race continues, how any woman has more than one child.

“But,” I say, desperate to lift my mood, “my dad visibly melted the moment he met Jack, despite his reservations about the father. The best thing out of all of this, the actual moment that has totally erased my doubts, is that the day I placed Jack in my mother’s arms, she smiled. She lit up. It was genuine joy and recognition. I won’t have anyone tell me that it was anything different. Everything I did to have my baby was worth it.”

He smiles. We drift into silence, and for once, I don’t rush to fill it. He does.

“It sounds as if you may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder or birth trauma. It’s not uncommon, apparently. There is more understanding and recognition surrounding it now,” he says. “I’ve encountered a few cases. The guilt is silencing because everyone knows someone who hasn’t been fortunate enough to have their own child or has lost one, so naturally, they keep quiet out of consideration, out of fear of appearing ungrateful, making a fuss or even the fear that social services will deem them an unfit mother and remove their child.”

He must’ve felt passionately about it as he breaks one of his own unspoken rules by sharing a rare snippet of personal information: that it affected his wife after their third child.

When there are mere minutes left of the session, during the usual time when Christian disengages and wraps up our conversation as best as he can, the urge to confess that’s been building all session, the desire for release, is so overwhelming that I blurt out, “I aborted Charlie’s baby.”