Step by Step Parenting

The first time I found out I was pregnant was just a few weeks shy of my twentieth birthday, and a few weeks after that, I’m pretty sure I met an angel.

My then-husband and I had only been married for a little over four months, and we certainly hadn’t been expecting me to become pregnant. We had just moved an hour away from all of our family, only had one car, and I was supposed to start another semester of college the first week of January, in just a few days.

And did I mention that I was only nineteen?

Despite all of this, my initial reaction was still pure joy. In that moment, I wasn’t worried about logistics or finances, although maybe a part of me should have been. I was going to be a mother! This wasn’t something I ever thought I wanted until I saw those two pink lines on a pregnancy test around midnight on December 29th, but the second I knew, it was all I could think about.

That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t terrified, though, and I felt incredibly alone. At my young age, I didn’t have a single friend who had a baby. None of my cousins on either side of the family had yet had kids. I was the oldest sibling, so none of my siblings had kids, either. I was on okay, but not the best, terms with my parents, so I didn’t feel like I could reach out to them just yet.

So the news stayed between me and my then-husband, and we tried to go about life as normally as possible. However, I immediately became extremely ill.

I had never experienced anything like it. I was rapidly losing weight, not gaining. I felt like I could, and often did, sleep eighteen hours or more a day. And the nausea, oh my goodness the nausea. I was running to the bathroom at least five times a day, unable to keep anything down. Looking back, I think I was suffering from HG, but at the time, I had no idea what that was. I didn’t even reach out to my doctor to let her know what was going on, because I figured it was just normal pregnancy symptoms.

Somehow, though I have no idea how, I pressed on and continued to work full-time while attending classes at college. It was maybe the first or second week of the semester when I found myself racing to the bathroom after class, sick once again.

I was so embarrassed. Surrounded by eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year olds, I felt like a pariah being pregnant, even if nobody could tell yet. Ashamed, I hid in the bathroom stall until everyone had left, not wanting to face anyone who might have just heard me lose my breakfast. I headed to the sink to wash my hands, when I saw her.

Standing off to the side was a girl about my height, about my age, with long wavy brown hair and kind eyes. She smiled gently, with raised eyebrows, and asked sincerely, “Are you ok?”

“Um,” I started to say, trying to keep it together despite the tears already forming, “yeah, I’m just… pregnant.”

I hadn’t told anyone else yet and immediately wondered if I had made a mistake, but before I had time to ponder that too much, her arms were around me, enveloping me in a hug. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until I find myself collapsing into a stranger’s arms, crying.

“Shhh, it will be ok,” she said softly, “I know it’s hard now, but you should start to feel better in a few weeks. I was only sick the first little bit.”

I pulled away and blinked. “You’ve been pregnant?”

She smiled again, but this time, with a little more sadness. “Yes,” she explained, “I didn’t keep the pregnancy, but yes, I was pregnant for ten or so weeks, last year.”

I didn’t know what to say, but she went on.

“It was the right decision for me, and my boyfriend. We wouldn’t have been able to care for a baby. I wouldn’t be here,” she gestured around us at the school building, “if I had had that baby.”

There was a pause, but I was both still at a loss for words, and could sense that she wasn’t done. Finally, she added, “Do you know if you’ll keep it?”

”No,” I practically whispered back, trying and failing not to sound scared. The truth was, although I was over the moon about the pregnancy, there was a seed of doubt in my mind that I wasn’t cut out to be a mother, that my then-husband and I shouldn’t have a baby, and, most painfully of all, that the baby I was carrying would be better off with another mother. A mother who knew what she was doing.

The girl hugged me once more, and said, “Whatever you decide, whatever happens, you will be okay. I promise.”

I hugged her back, not wanting to be the first one to pull away this time. I had spent weeks feeling sick, scared, and alone. So, so alone. I didn’t believe in God at the time, but I couldn’t help but wonder if God had sent an angel to me that day, to remind me in my lowest moment that I was loved, and that I would be okay.

The girl gave me her cell phone number, and told me if I ever needed anything at all, to reach out. I never saw her again, and to this day, I think about her all the time. I wonder if she has any idea how much her kindness impacted me, even now, over six years later. Having a stranger in the bathroom give me permission to make whatever choice was best for me gave me the courage to do just that. I chose to stay pregnant, even though I was scared and felt like I had little support, and that was the first tiny act of courage that changed my life. Eventually, I left that marriage, in hopes that a better relationship was waiting for me, and that was another act of courage. Some years later, I met my now-husband, and agreeing to get married again required even more courage. After that, once I had graduated college, I decided to go to law school. That one took a lot of courage. Finally, I discovered what I had been gathering all of that courage for.

In late July of last year, I found out that my husband and I were expecting twins. The fear and excitement I felt at the news made the same feelings I had six years prior, with my first pregnancy, feel like nothing.

As the pregnancy progressed, I grew more and more sick. Somehow, I managed to still attend law school full-time, all while parenting three older kids. I had many dark days. I think I even struggled with prenatal depression. But I remembered the stranger, or perhaps angel, that I had meant in the bathroom almost six years earlier, and just like I had during my first pregnancy, I clung to her words:

“Whatever happens, you will be okay.”

And I was.