Today’s episode is an essay written and read by Lizzie Heiselt. It takes on the “all that matters is that you have a healthy baby” idea. For anyone who’s been told this, you know there’s not really a response to that. On some level, it’s true. Having a baby—let alone a healthy one—is something to be grateful for. But it doesn’t mean that sometimes there isn’t something to mourn, that there isn’t a sense of loss. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not entitled to feel those feelings.

Lizzie takes one angle on that—gender, specifically—and, in conversation mentioned that it’s not exactly a “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” kind of situation . . . more like a “love the one you’re with” sort of deal. And of course you will love the one you’re with. Even as you mourn what might have been.