Beginnings

Conception is typically the beginning of the journey. Sometimes that journey takes a sharp left turn we were just not expecting.

Pregnant. That’s what the test showed when I took the hundredth pregnancy test, at least it felt like the hundredth. After reading that I immediately had the worst thought I never thought I would have. “You have to abort. You can’t afford this right now.” My husband and I had been trying for months, and that was my immediate response? I felt shame and anger immediately. At my thoughts and at the sexual abuse I had endured growing up and then later in college.

I never believed I would have children. Too much trauma. Too many beatings to remember. I was angry with myself for weeks for having those thoughts. I on one hand was right. We couldn’t afford what was coming. But the child I was carrying was innocent and deserved life. So a life I was going to give.

I had it all planned. Midwives a natural birth, I would hold my baby and nurse her for as long as she wanted. That never happened. And not for the lack of trying.

My little baby girl, made her own way into this world.

At five months pregnant I got a phone call from my midwife. “You either need to go to the emergency room or get the soonest appointment you can with the perinatologist your liver is not functioning properly and you might lose your baby if we don’t get this figured out quick.” That was the call I got while at work in a bridal shop.

Every mother’s nightmare. You might lose your child. I heard this over and over through my whole pregnancy. Do you know how awful I felt? Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Maybe you do, maybe you’ve gone through something similar and are looking for a way to make it all better for you or someone else going through it. My friend, the fear is still very present. It’s not rational, it’s not something I should have had to deal with it’s just there. Never going to really go away I think. I pray it does.