As most people know, I am a mommy. I have a little boy who recently turned 3 years old. He is my best friend, my soul, the air I breathe. (A lot of mommies can relate to this, although, sadly, not ALL mothers.)
However, few of the mommies I know can relate to the feelings I felt, pre-motherhood. That is what this blog is about. I won’t tell the whole story, and I’ll spare you most of the gruesome details, in part because I do plan to write a book and also because it is too much for some to handle.
I had a plan, just like most young girls. I planned to have a career out of high school, a house, a marriage. I planned to have children. From a young age I knew I would be a great mom, and was so excited to be an adult and begin living my dreams. I had planned out in my head, my nursery. How I would paint it for a baby girl, and for a baby boy. I still keep the images in my head for these nurseries, someday.
But how many of our lives have turned out as planned right? I can look at a lot of my peers, acquaintances, family, and say THEIR lives turned out how I planned, but how I had planned for myself. But I feel no bitterness toward them, only happiness for them. However, I do feel sadness and frustration at times. No regret, but confusion. What wrong turn did I take that I hadn’t noticed them taking the other?
I am a single mother. This is a frustrating topic for me. By single mother I mean I do not receive any support, I do not get every other weekend to have a sanity break. I do not have an ex-husband or a “baby daddy” to help me buy shoes, clothes, diapers, food. I never did. My family, god bless, help out when they see me struggling, when they are able. I have done this by myself since Jaks was a pea sprouting appendages in my womb. I am a single mother.
Early pregnancy for me was a medley of emotions, but not in the way it is for all pregnant women. It was intensified by doubt, fear, shame…
The girl who had always dreamed of being a mommy doubted herself. I doubted not if I would be a good mother, but (bite your lip for this) if I would be able to love this child growing inside of me. I know, I know, horrible person I seem. Understand a few things first before you pass judgment. I got pregnant in the midst of a very ugly, near impossible escape from a very abusive, mentally ill human being. I put myself in a position to be trapped and it seemed the evil had won. I was in a panic and felt as if the evil had overcome me. That is where the fear came into play. What if I raise this child and I can hardly bear looking at him/her? What if he/she turns out just as sick and evil as the person who played part in the conception? I was struck to my core with fear. *This is where I will spare you the details of what I endured, which would likely make you as sick as it makes me still to this day*
I felt shame. Do I even need explain? I live in Utah, I am single, pregnant, broke, and a nervous wreck! This was not how it was supposed to be!!!
I would cry and cry and sometimes not sleep for days at a time. Then I realized something. My mother did it. With 3 children! I recall her explaining to me, although at times she would look at her children and see the man’s face, whom had beaten her, spit on her, ground her into the dirt, it had no impact on her love for us. She loves us more than life itself, and that I would love this baby. I would love this child with all of my being. For the first time since I saw the little pink plus sign on those pee sticks, I could BREATHE!
My pregnancy progressed as pregnancy does and I became increasingly excited! I began to feel high off of feeling the baby move. I would poke at him and wake him up just to feel him again! It was an experience I had always envisioned sharing. Not with the person who impregnated me, but the faceless person I had dreamt I would be spending my life with. Somebody who I would marry and build a life with should have his hand on my tummy, feeling the kicks and flips of the child we created, sharing that high. Instead I lay alone on my bed, in my mother’s house, feeling alone and sad. I felt the absence of my faceless dream strongest at the most magical moments throughout my pregnancy. At the doctor visits I had my sister, or my best friend to share in the excitement, but I craved what I was missing.
Due to the enormous amount of debt I was left with upon my escape, I had a hard time acquiring things for my baby. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who supported my decision to raise my child alone. My friends and family set me up nicely with the things I would need when the baby arrived. Two of my friends especially, generously provided me with key baby needs, to which I forever will be grateful. I set up half of my room, as a mini-nursery. It wasn’t a nursery like I had dreamt for my child but it was the best I could do.
Anyways, I get lost in details but stay with me! So, there I am all big and pregnant, ridiculously close to my due date. Yoga, daily walks, nothing I tried was helping my situation! I tried EVERYTHING. *Sparing details* BAM! I wake up early morning the day after my due date thinking my water broke! *Sparing more details* My mom and I are driving to the hospital at 5 a.m. and my contractions are getting stronger and stronger. Long story short I am in labor, being checked into the hospital, and the nurse is asking questions and typing away and she asks me the “father’s” name. Quickly my mom pipes up, “unknown.”
WHEW! Talk about if looks could kill, that nurse would have put me in my coffin right then and there. She was judging me. But I was too excited to care! My little sister showed up after a while and I was so glad, because what happened next, my poor little mother could not have handled alone. BAHHA!
You see, I opted to NOT do the Epidural. (I wouldn’t change my mind if you asked me today) Mom and Holly say it was like the exorcist, they were waiting for my head to start spinning, but this is my story so… I gracefully handled the excruciating pain I was in and attempted to get up and walk which everyone thought was a bad idea, rightfully so being shortly after that my nurse was delivering my little bundle of…. BLUE???
Yup, he was blue, and scared me half to death. After three hours in the NICU I finally got to see him, hold him. Kiss him <3 I had an abundance of visitors that day and eventually everyone left me there alone with my new gift.
That night as I held him next to my heart, I knew exactly what my mom was talking about. He was perfect in every way, and the reason my heart is beating every day. That night my soul came alive.
When I look back on it I am still slightly sad that I didn’t have my soul mate to share that moment with but the selfish me says it’s alright. This amazing creation is all mine. From that moment on, mine.
It is hard at times and some days I still get sad. I didn’t get his infant pictures done, I couldn’t afford it. When I see my friends and their babies’ photos, I wish I had. I look at my friends around me with their families, and I feel guilty. I feel as if my poor decisions have refused my child a whole family. Sometimes it is unbearable and I feel like a failure.
However, the choice I made, to raise my son without the influence of the person who impregnated me, still feels like the best decision I could have made given the circumstances. When I look at my little boys face I know in my heart he is better off and one day, he will have a whole family. For now he has his Mom-moms, his Grammy, Papa-Gary, Aunt Hawdie, Unkie, Madi, Unko Head, Nikki, His P-Pa and Granny Glaw(Gloria), Dasya and Tati-nana, as well as many other people in his life who love him and will be there for him always.
I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me or us, pity is for the pitiful. I want each and every person who will read these words to look at their lives and evaluate how lucky they are to have the little things, because those little things may be big things to someone else. The little moments taken for granted by one, may just be the little moments yearned for by another.
My dream has changed slightly. Now it is OUR dream. We will have a house. I just have to work a little longer and harder to get it. And in the backyard there will be a big tree with an epic tree-house and a dog house for the dog we will have. I might get married and have another baby or two, someday. I may not have pictures, documenting my amazing gift from god, and our journey that has led us to where we are now, but I do have my memories. Every day when I look at that chubby little face and those sky-blue eyes, I am reminded that although it has been and continues to be a bumpy ride and isn’t the perfect fairytale I had imagined it would be, I wouldn’t take it back for the world, because, I have him, he has me, and at the end of the day that is all that matters. <3
