Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 60864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
I always imagined myself as a mother one day. I wouldn’t say I really dreamed about it or that it was something I longed for. It was just something I assumed would happen in my future, just like eventually finding someone to love and settling down. Though I didn’t think about it in that way until I got used to carrying my Derek and my baby, I realized running from my family and trying to avoid them until I could get my trust fund was for more than one reason.
I wanted to protect myself, of course. I didn’t want to let my family use me and tell me what I was going to do and who I was going to marry so they could reap the benefits. That was my choice to make. I wanted to have a real partner, to be in love and to have a real marriage.
During my pregnancy, I realized I was also protecting my future as a mother. It was hard to really wrap my head around, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been guarding the child I would one day have, the child I would never have if I was forced into the marriage my parents wanted for me.
Even though I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about it, I could just see myself with a child one day. I could see myself taking care of a baby and raising a child. I wondered if I would have a son or daughter, what kind of child they would be, and what kind of adult they would grow up to be. But I never put a lot of thought into pregnancy. That was just something that would happen, that I would get through in order to get that baby in my arms.
Raising a child wasn’t going to be easy all the time, and I knew I would face stress and challenges along the way. It never occurred to me that one of those challenges would be the pregnancy itself. As it turned out, the horrible weeks of sickness to start my pregnancy were just the beginning.
That first visit to the hospital started a string of visits with complications that kept me on edge and stopped me from feeling healthy and truly excited. I loved my baby and was still looking forward to meeting what we learned during one of the visits was our daughter. But there were times as the weeks passed, and I kept going in and out of the hospital when it got harder to believe I would ever actually get to feel the happiness I so wanted.
Rather than getting to schedule normal regular ultrasounds or look forward to finding out about each milestone of the pregnancy, those reveals were most often buried in emergency room visits or frightening overnight stays for observation.
Derek was helping me into the house after another visit when the emotion of it all came down on me, and tears pooled up in my eyes. I gripped his hand harder, and Derek looked over at me.
“Hey,” he said when he noticed my tears. “What’s going on?”
“I’m just thinking about everything,” I said.
He got me into the house and brought me into our room. I slipped into bed, and he pulled the covers up around me.
“Let me get you some tea. I’ll be right back.”
He left, and I tried to pull myself together and stop crying, but the tears just kept flowing. When he came back in with a cup of my favorite herbal, I sat up and leaned my head back against the headboard, wiping my cheeks.
“Everything that’s been going on with the baby has me thinking about my family,” I said.
He nodded. “Me too.”
“Really?” I asked, scooping some honey into my cup and stirring it around.
“Yes. My family has been around so much through this whole pregnancy.”
“I know. They’ve helped so much and been there for me through everything. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it all without everybody. Especially Ally. I am so lucky I met her.”
“I’m sure she would say the same thing about you,” he said with a smile.
I nodded. “I appreciate them all so much. They mean the world to me. But I can’t stop thinking about my family and how if things stay the same as they are right now, this baby will never know them. And they won’t know her. She won’t have any grandparents to love on or have sleepovers with or visit on the holidays.
“And my parents will miss out on their first grandchild. They did something terrible, and there were a lot of things as I was growing up that made me really uncomfortable. I’ll be the first to admit they have done shady things. But they are still my parents,” I said.