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"One day you're there, then all of a sudden... there's less of you and you wonder where that part went...
if it's living somewhere outside of you... and you keep thinking... maybe you'll get it back.  and then you realize ... it's just gone"

This blows my mind.  She wanted "other things', she tells Pete.  I just watched this again this morning; a round up of favorite Peggy scenes from Mad Men.  In this scene she tells Pete that she had his baby and gave it away.  As she is telling him the lines quoted above, I initially thought she was talking about the baby.  But seeing it again, she could be talking about her baby or her ambition.  She chose ambition.

Her ambition was such an integral part of her, so central to her being.  I can read this scene as a metaphor for women having children - at least for ambitious women who have children.  You have a child and it crowds out ambition.  It's there, but the quotidian tasks of child rearing consume you and it feels very sudden.  You are a smart and ambitious person, then suddenly you become invisible.  You think that when the baby naps or when the baby starts pre-school you will get it back.  It's still there and you will get it back.  Then you realize that you made different choices and it's just gone.

Peggy knew that by becoming a wife and a mother, she would be less of herself and even though everything about that time and age insisted that she do so; she chose "other things".

and Pete was incredulous...