In this week’s episode, we’re bringing you two stories about navigating the uncertainty, hope, and heartbreak of trying to have a baby.

Part 1: After a pregnancy loss, Annie Tan channels her grief into rescuing an injured mockingbird.

Annie Tan is an educator, activist, writer and storyteller from Manhattan's Chinatown. Annie’s work has been featured in Huffington Post, New Republic, PBS’ Asian Americans, RISK! and twice on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR. Annie is writing a memoir about connecting with her immigrant parents despite not sharing a common fluent language. Find more at annietan.com.

Part 2: Kibby McMahon is convinced she can will her way into pregnancy, but her body refuses to follow the plan.

Dr. Kibby McMahon is a licensed clinical psychologist, researcher, and digital health entrepreneur who’s obsessed with the emotional complexities of relationships. She earned her BA from Columbia University and her PhD in clinical psychology from Duke University, where her NIMH-funded research focused on how regulating our own emotions helps us connect more deeply with others. She has held research and clinical roles at Duke University Medical Center, Columbia University, Weill Cornell Hospital, and the Max Planck Institute. Dr. Kibby is a family caregiver and breast cancer survivor- experiences that reshaped how she understands vulnerability, resilience, and what it means to care for others while holding yourself together. These threads came together when she co-founded KulaMind, a digital mental health company that supports loved ones of people with mental illness through evidence-based skills, coaching, and AI-powered tools. She also hosts the podcast "A Little Help for Our Friends," which explores the invisible emotional labor of loving someone who is struggling with mental health or addiction. She lives in New York with her tornado of a son, a fluff of a dog, and a partner-in-crime husband.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

My story takes place on a Saturday night in May. It's dark, it's cloudy, it's starting to rain and my husband and I are getting our laundry. We have to go to the laundromat, pick up our stuff. We're wheeling our cart back and, all of a sudden, Corey swerves the cart and he says, “Annie, there's a piece of poop there.”

I was like, “Okay.”

We swerved, and then out of the corner of my eye, the poop started to move. I was like, “Oh.” So we looked closer. We shined a flashlight and it turned out to be a little bird.

Annie Tan shares her story at Caveat in New York, NY in January 2026. Photo by Zhen Qin.

As a New Yorker, I normally would just walk away from the bird. I have definitely walked away from many a dead bird in my lifetime and been like, “Too bad. Bye,” and walked away. But this day, this Saturday night, I just couldn't leave this bird alone.

And what I didn't tell you about this May Saturday was that it was five days after I had just had a pregnancy loss. So I had something called preterm premature rupture of membrane, PPROM, which means, basically, your water breaks too early. That happened at 17 weeks, about four months pregnant.

My daughter Chloe and me still had a heartbeat, and so we were hoping like maybe my mucus plug would stay in. But the next day, I started developing an infection. If I didn't get an induced abortion, or what's called a D&E where they vacuum out the remains of your child, then I could have also died too from that infection.

So that happened and I was just so sad, carrying around grief napkins with me everywhere, crying everywhere I went. And I used one of those grief napkins to pick up this little bird and put it next to a tree so that at least the bird wouldn't get stepped on.

And I looked at Corey and I was like, “Corey, put the laundry away, get a shoebox, get something, and we've got to figure out what to do with the bird.”

And Corey's like, “But what if it has bird flu? What if it has disease?”

“Corey, no.”

So I pick up my phone and I'm like, “All right, let's look up what to do.” New York City. Injured bird on Google. What to do?

We find something from the New York City Bird Alliance. They say to get a paper bag, a tote bag, or a shoe box and put the bird inside. That way, it won't get disoriented. Close it up and then bring it home. I looked at Corey and I looked at this bird, and I just remembered the day that I left the hospital without Chloe. That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. And I said, “We can't leave this bird.”

So Corey goes upstairs. He grabs many gloves, because we have so many gloves from COVID. We pick up the bird and we put it in the shoebox and we bring it upstairs. And while he's getting the stuff, I am emailing because the New York City Bird Alliance has an email to send the location and the photo to. So we just wait and we see what to do.

But as I'm looking at this bird, it looks so curmudgeonly. It looks so grumpy. It's so cute. It fits in the palm of my hand. It looks like it has a gash on its head. Feathers are just like, there's no feathers on its head and it just looks so pathetic.

I was like, “What do we do?”

And less than half an hour later, we get a phone call from a volunteer who was just about to close up for the night. So she was like, “Okay, you need to first make a nest. Do you have any hand warmers? Because your bird, you said, is shaking.”

So we got hand warmers and then you wrap them in tissues, so that the bird doesn't burn because the hand warmers can get really, really hot. And then the person told us to make like a container. So we put it in a plastic container and I put a lot of paper tissues in there. And then the person was like, “Okay. Do you have like towels to make it soft, like a softness?”

And I was like, “Hmm, I am not going to let a little bird shit all over a good towel.” And so more paper tissues in there.

And the volunteer said, just from the photo, she could tell this was a nestling mockingbird. So this mockingbird could not have flown. It could not have survived on its own without us, so she really thanked us.

And then she said, “Can you bring the bird into our office headquarters tomorrow?”

I was like, that is a step too far. I am not going to do that not because I'm not a kind person but, that day, that Sunday was the second Sunday of May. And what is the second Sunday of May? Mother’s Day.

Six days after I lost Chloe, to then think about Mother's Day, I knew I had no plans for that day, except to be under covers and cry under my blankets. I knew I couldn't bring that bird. I didn't even know if I could bring that bird. So I just meekly said, “Can someone come to pick up the bird?”

And so the person says, “Yes, we can get someone on our transporter team to pick up the bird.”

So we wait. We wait for the volunteer to let us know what's happening. While that's happening, we see the bird starting to get comfortable in its nest, still really quiet.

And Corey looks at me and he just says, “Wow, it's like we're Jonathan and Martha Kent bringing home a wayward child.”

Then out of nowhere, all of a sudden, we hear, “Meh-meh-meh. Meh-meh-meh.” So this bird has started chirping because it's now feeling okay. It's looking at us like weird. And we are also not allowed to feed the bird or give it water in case of any injuries. Maybe it'll choke. So we just kind of look at it.

Then an hour later, we get a call from another volunteer saying she'll be there at 11:00 tomorrow morning. And she said, “Please let us know if the bird survives the night. Because, obviously, if the bird does not survive the night, there's no reason for me to come.”

So we hang up and I look at the bird. The hardest thing of that night was closing the shoebox to this bird. It just felt so miserable to, like, hide it and just wonder, is this bird going to be alive when I open this box tomorrow? “Please, bird, please survive,” is what I said to the box.

I closed the lights. I tried to pretend there wasn't another life in the room, and we just hoped. I went to bed somehow, set my alarm to meet the volunteer at 11:00.

And then I woke up without the alarm because I was like, “Oh, my God, like, is this bird still alive?” And I could hear very, very faintly from my pillow, “Meh-meh-meh, Meh-meh-meh.”

So I, like, hop out of bed, no slippers on, and I just run to the shoebox and I open up the shoebox. The bird has jumped out of its nest, shat all over the shoebox with the tissues, and was now angry at me. “Meh-meh-meh. Meh-meh-meh.” Wanting water, wanting food, and I was like, “Is this how a parent feels when they can’t help their child? This is horrible. This is the worst feeling in the world.”

But I was so happy to text that volunteer and say, “The bird is alive.”

And as I looked at my phone, I also got a bunch of text messages from friends who knew about Chloe and who said, “Happy Mother's Day, Annie, to you and Chloe.” That just made me feel so seen that Mother's Day, that they would acknowledge me as a mom.

The volunteer came at 11:00 and she told me that she was supposed to do three bird pickups today, but the other two birds didn't survive, and mine was the only pickup today. We tried to reunite the bird with her family but the nest was on the third floor, so there was no way. So she, in her owl‑covered bag, brought the bird into the headquarters.

And I looked at Corey, and I was like, “We saved a motherfucking bird on Mother's Day! Yeah!”

Two‑and‑a‑half weeks after that, the funeral home called and told us that Chloe's ashes were ready, so I went to pick up the ashes. And as I was walking home from the car with the ashes, I got an email from the Wild Bird Fund. They said, “We're doing everything we can for the bird you brought in. Thank you. We have named her Lynnie. We don't have capacity to give you any more updates, but rest assured, we're going to do everything we can.”

And so I am relieved knowing the day we bring Chloe home is the day that Lynnie, the bird is okay.

A year passes and I take care of myself. I take a mental health day. Then five more days passes and then I'm just spiraling again. It's been one of the hardest years of my life just wondering if we'll get pregnant. We're not pregnant yet. We're grieving still. And not only are we grieving the loss of Chloe, but we're grieving a chance at possibly ever having a biological child.

And so I start doom scrolling, as one does, and Google Photos reminds me, “Hey, it's the year anniversary of this bird.” So I was like, “Oh, right, Lynnie.” So I was like, “Let me scroll through the Wild Bird Fund’s Instagram page,” which has all of these cute birds that have been rescued. Highly recommend.

And I just keep scrolling. I keep looking. And then I look at a post from May 30th, 2024, just 19 days after we found Lynnie. The caption says they found a bunch of birds, a robin, but also some nestling mockingbirds. And I swipe to the second photo, and there's a little curmudgeonly mockingbird that's bigger and has a green band on it. I'm like, “I think that's Lynnie.”

So I DM the Wild Bird Fund Instagram, and I was like, “Hey, do you think this bird is Lynnie?” And 40 minutes later, this is 10:00 PM and they responded at 10:45 PM on like a Friday or Saturday night. And they said, “Yes, I think that is Lynnie. She had a green band. She was in our care for a month. And afterwards, we took her to the Narrows Botanical Garden in Bay Ridge. And when she was ready and gotten used to the wild, we set her free alongside a number of nursery birds.”

That just warmed my heart. Even through this really, really hard infertility journey, I am doing my third egg retrieval sometime this week for IVF. We've done IUI. We've done the ovulation medications. We've cried so much. We've done insurance changes, which has been horrible. And every time I think about, “Man, this just sucks. What was Chloe's death for? Why am I just doing all this to myself?”

Then one day, on a really, really hard day, I was by my window. And I heard, “Meh-meh-meh. Meh-meh-meh,” some adult mockingbird out somewhere in the distance. And I knew it. It just reminded me that there is some bird out there, Lynnie the bird, flying wild, flying free right now because Chloe existed.

Thank you.

Part 2

I used to be a big believer in willpower. I used to plan. I used to work hard and believe that if you just put in the effort and plan and work, you could get everything you want in life.

I earned my way into my Ph.D. program at Duke where I was studying to be a clinical psychologist. I was like the best student. I was glued to my computer for 12 hours a day every day. It's not an exaggeration. I was just doing all the right things.

Kibby McMahon shares her story at Caveat in New York, NY in January 2026. Photo by Zhen Qin.

But then when I turned 30, my biological clock started to tick. I was like, “Okay, it's time for a family.” I had spent all of my energies building my career up at that point, but then I was like, “Okay, I'm going to do family now.”

Everything seemed like it was going to plan when my college boyfriend came back into my life. I hadn't seen him for many years, and we ran into each other at a mutual friend's wedding. He actually admitted to me that I was the only woman he's ever loved. He had commitment issues back then, so I was like, “You know, I'm not going to entertain this unless you're serious.”

And he said everything I wanted to hear. He was like, “I want to get married and have babies with you. I'll move to be with you.” And he was training to be a pediatrician. It seemed like everything was just working out. Everything was good on paper, but I always had this gut feeling that something wasn't right. I always had it, even from the very beginning.

When he moved into my house, he decided that he needed to take a brief sabbatical to find himself for about two to three months. That lasted about four years. Apparently, he was so burnt out from his medical training that he needed to heal and recover by sitting in my basement, playing guitar and smoking weed.

As a clinical psychologist, I don't know if that's the right way, but, you know, hey, to each their own. But I was like, “Okay, fine. This is just a bump on the road. This is a hard, hard time. Building a family takes work.” So I paid the bills, I took care of the house, three meals a day, and I was also writing my master's thesis, so I was really overwhelmed.

And I would ask him, like, “Hey, what are you going to do with your life? Like, are you going to get a job?” It just never went well. It was just an unproductive fight after fight. So I learned to just not say anything. I was just hopeful that this was just a rough patch, because this had to work out, right? I needed this to work out. I had to will this family into existence.

So we got married in 2018. Great idea. But I was like, “Okay, marriages aren't perfect, but kids will fix everything, right?”

As you can tell, it didn't really work out that well. I was so shocked when we couldn't get pregnant right away. We tried right away to start to get pregnant and it just wasn't working. A couple months of trying and I started to get really anxious. And like the good student, I applied my type A personality to reproduction. I went down all these rabbit holes on the internet and fertility research about what leads to fertility or not.

I'm pretty shocked. The fertility research leaves much to be desired. I'm sorry if anyone is in that field, but do better. There is actually a lot that we don't know about why someone can't get pregnant. There's a lot of mystery involved. What we do know is that it's usually the woman's fault.

Reading all that research, I was like, “Okay, I'll do what I can.” I was taking all the right supplements. I was cutting back on sugar, even though I love sugar. I was meticulously scheduling sex and taking my temperature every day. You know, all the right things. Straight A student to reproduction.

And the one thing I could find that men could actually do is monitor their marijuana intake. Marijuana was the only thing that science said affect men's fertility. So I was like, “Hey,” I'm going to call him Danny. I was like, “Danny, please just abstain from smoking just for like a couple weeks before we try.”

And I remember being in my kitchen. I had a really rough week. I had just gone on some new meds to try to get me to ovulate and it was making me a crazy person. I was just holding myself together. Every day was hard.

Danny was hanging out with a friend in the basement for a couple hours, and then when he came up out of the basement and opened the door, I looked at him and the first thing I saw was his eyes were bloodshot. Then a moment later, the smell of smoke hit me. I burst into tears right in front of him.

Immediately, he was apologizing. “Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I forgot.” I actually thought that made it worse. Because I was like, “I have been putting my body and mind through hell every single day for months and you get the luxury of letting it slip your mind.” I was heartbroken, but I was also so exhausted. I wanted an equal partner to carry this burden with me and I was alone carrying it. I was just so lost.

I went to the best fertility doctor I could find at Duke. I was so excited to put my hands in the best that academia had to offer. I was like, “Okay, this is going to work.” And it made me feel so much worse. I was alone in my first appointment with him, this doctor, famous doctor, and he was just rattling off depressing statistics about pregnancy and then even more depressing prices of the treatments that would help me.

I sat there silently and I looked at him and I said, “What's wrong with me? Is there something wrong with me? Can I ever have children?”

He looked me dead in the eye and said, “I think there's a 0% chance that you'll get pregnant naturally.”

I remember having to hold in my tears, nod and hold in my tears until I got to my car. And then I just sobbed driving home.

Then I called my best friend Alex, who we've been best friends since we were 18. And even though we've always lived on opposite sides of the country, he was always the person I called whenever I was upset or just wanted to vent. And same here. He always called me. We were each other's confidants at home.

I told him what happened, and he was just like, “You know what? I know you're going to be a mother. I have faith.” And I just wanted to have the same faith that he did. I wasn't sure. I didn't know.

A couple months later, we were starting our IVF cycle. Danny and I decided to have one last hurrah, a mushroom trip. I'm sorry, Mom. My mom's a little... it's legal in some places, you know. And I was like a straight A student, like type A to drugs as well. And I was like, “Okay, this is when I'm going to remove the emotional blocks that is keeping me from being a parent, and we're going to connect and emerge as a unit and it's all going to be great.”

I ended up actually slipping into my own journey. I was really surprised. I closed my eyes, lay on the couch for hours, and I heard my own voice, like an older and deeper version of my own voice. It told me that the essence of life is this mother's energy. It's like maternal love that gives birth to everything in the universe. It also said that this energy can't be forced or controlled or will‑powered. You just got to let it do its thing. Just make space for it. And when you do that, some people are going to come and go because some people will be called by it and some people will run away from it. I just have to let that happen.

So I woke up from that trip with this amazing sense of peace and confidence and inner wisdom. I interpreted that feeling as, okay, it's going to work this time. I'm going to get pregnant. Yeah, I did it.

But a couple days before the embryo transfer, the embryo is all ready, about to put it in me, I was listening to Danny talk to a friend who was also having marital issues. I heard him give his friend advice to really listen to his wife and really show up for her.

I just remember that moment of hypocrisy made all the resentment rush to my face in this white‑hot rage. And then I felt quiet. I felt silent. That's when I knew the marriage was over.

So we got divorced, which was terrifying because I was 34, single, during the pandemic, and wanting to start a family again. I was just like, “What am I going to do? What do I do this for?” I can't believe that mother energy led me to get on Hinge. I don't know. It was just horrible. I was terrified.

Luckily, that summer, things were opening up, summer of 2021. My friend Alex comes to visit just to spend the summer with me while I'm going through this divorce. And I remember that we went to see another friend who had just given birth. I watched him hold this newborn baby in his hand so gently, and I remember thinking, “My God, he's just such a natural caregiver. He makes everyone around him feel cared for,” like I always felt with him.

Then in the cab home, he started saying, “You know, I'm scared that in this next phase of life we're going to have our own families. We live so far apart that I think we're just going to drift apart from each other.” And he started crying.

I reached out and put my hand on his face instinctively in this way that I'd never had before and that was the moment that I think shifted us out of the friend zone, because shortly after that, he made the first move. And yes, you made the first move. It's my story. You made the first move. He made the first move and we got together. I was really, honestly, I don't think I've told him this before, but I was so scared to bring my brokenness to him and make him experience the infertility that I went through. I was so scared to do that to my friend that I love so much.

So I said, “You know, this is going to take a long time. Let's just start trying,” because we wanted to have a baby. And the first month we tried, I was late.

I remember, I was alone when I got my pregnancy test, these tests that were just the bane of my existence. It was always such disappointment whenever I saw it. But I was waiting for the result and I remember thinking, “These are the last moments I have before I find out that I'm going to become a mother.” I knew that as soon as that thought entered my head, I knew the answer.

And watching the test turn positive, I just started crying and laughing at the same time, because I was so relieved that that horrible, demoralizing journey was over and I was getting to start a whole new beautiful one.

Now, whenever Alex and I have to wrestle with our toddler to brush his teeth or to eat protein, I have to remind myself that I didn't become a mother out of willpower. I became a mother from trusting my gut and just making space for the life that was already trying to find me.

Thank you.