wife, and now me. I did my best to try to hide my pregnancy and denied all and any accusations of being pregnant.
What I started noticing in the fourth month were my mood swings. One minute I'm fine, then the next second I'm crying at some lousy TV commercial. I was feeling that teenage angst syndrome of not knowing what you want or what you're feeling. I felt as if I was sixteen years old and hated everybody and everything all over again. I hated being a teenager and I hated the emotions that I was feeling.
I didn't want a kid. I didn't want to have to be a mom. I just frankly didn't want the responsibility. I was fine taking care of myself and my boyfriend had just moved in with me and we were doing great together. I didn't want a child. I asked my boyfriend how he would feel if I aborted the child.
"If you get an abortion," he answered, "I will not want to ever have another child with you, or create a family with you." I thought that was a bit harsh.
So I secretly hoped for a miscarriage to happen.
Along with the teenage hormones (now they were baby hormones) surging through my body, I was eating a little differently. No, I didn't crave the pickles and ice cream, but I did crave foods in excess. For example, one whole week during this time all I wanted was dairy, which was pretty interesting because I'm lactose intolerant. I would gorge on cheese, milk, ice cream, cottage cheese, and sour cream and then spend an hour in the bathroom cursing
what I had just eaten. Sometimes the lactose pills would help, but it was just hit or miss with those things.
I was glad that summertime had finally arrived. I could wear my dresses and lounge around all day. As the weather got warmer I was eating more summer foods and my all-time favorite was watermelon. In one hand I was sucking on a Popsicle and the other hand held a healthy slice of watermelon. This was my heaven, except for crying at the TV every other commercial.
Everything was great and then four days into summer break and I find out that my sister died from a heroin overdose. Oh, this was just perfect, as if my emotions needed help. I go back to California and deal with all of the funeral arrangements and two weeks later I'm back home and trying once again to relax.
I was enjoying sleeping in until the afternoon, because the weather was extremely sultry and I didn't feel like doing much of anything else. My boyfriend was having bar-b-ques almost every night and we were working through my roller coaster hormones. Everything was seemingly okay, which should have made me wonder what was going to happen next.
Then it happens, my boyfriend's parole officer sent him back to prison. She had said that he had missed his urine analysis appointment and she sent him back with no turn around time, so I did not know when he was coming home.
Yes, this is what I needed, another strain on my hormones. Okay, everything that could go wrong did in my external situations. My pregnancy was
the only thing that was fine. My physical body couldn't be better. My emotional body was falling apart. The answer for my emotional release was that school was starting soon and would force me to think of other things besides my sister dying, my boyfriend going back to prison, and having to move.
Two weeks before my lease ended, I was granted a miracle of a new place to live, I was now eight months along. My mom came out and helped me move, because I was still teaching. I did not go on maternity leave until one week before I had the baby. I was more irritable, more agitated, and more bitchy than I had ever been in my life. I complained about everything, nothing was ever good enough for me and I let everyone know it. That last week before I had my son was the most difficult for me and for everyone dealing with me.
Then I went into labor. After two trips to the hospital and remaining at one and a half centimeters, my mom and I went back home and I tried to sleep. In the morning we went back to the hospital and after another seven hours of hard labor, three hours of pushing, and trying to pull him out with forceps, the doctors tell me that I need an emergency C-section. I had had two epiderals and felt numb from the neck down. They asked me if I could move from the delivery table to the gurney. What? Move? "Sure," I told them. With all of my strength I tried to move my motionless body, but it was just that motionless. Next I found myself being rolled down hallways and into a brightly lit room. Everything happened so fast, it seemed like a blur.
The doctors prepped me and I felt this pulling and tugging and pushing on my abdomen and then they showed me this little bloody body with a squished face and I was wondering where this baby came from. But everything changed when I heard his first cries. Something happened inside of me and I became acutely aware of this new life and knew that I would do anything for my little man. It was a feeling that was like no other and even though the pregnancy was hell, I knew the instant that I heard him, I would do it again. My little man was worth every second of extreme emotion, every tear that I cried at a commercial, everything that I went through in the pregnancy. I would do it all over for him.
Now, a year later, as I look back upon all that I went through for my son and all of the extenuating circumstances that surrounded the pregnancy, I realize that it was all worth it. Of course I wish some of it did not happen the way it did, but I would not trade anything in this world for my baby boy, as he smiles and says, "Momma."
