Happy ending.

14 years ago, at the ripe age of 14, I got pregnant. Sadly, it was so frowned upon to be excited as a young teen that i never got any maternity pictures done. I barely have any pictures of my belly at all from then. Although I had full support from my family, it still wasn’t anything that anyone (including myself) wanted me to flaunt.

At 15, I gave birth to the most amazing little girl who will be 14 in October.

At 17, I got pregnant again. The relationship was abusive since I found out I was pregnant with my daughter 3 years earlier. He had even admitted that he had gotten me pregnant on purpose the first time. This time around, I was so afraid of disappointing everyone, AGAIN, that I hid my pregnancy until I was 6 months along. At my first doctors appointment, we found out we were having a boy. But that wasn’t all we found out. Our little dude had a condition called Hydrocephalus. In a short description, basically he had no brain, just a brain stem. He would be wheelchair bound his whole life without being able to do anything on his own, ever. And that was if he even survived birth. I was given the option to terminate the pregnancy because of this. But i had a very long talk with God and decided that this happened to me for a reason. That if God thought I was strong enough to handle it at 17, that i would. So I carried him to term. I had to have a c-section because his head was abnormally large since it was filled with spinal fluid. He spent 2 weeks in he NICU when they told me he was too small to put a shunt in, which meant there was nothing they could do for him. I got to take him home and spend long days and nights feeding him through a tube with no sleep. He was in pain. Because there was no shunt, his head continued to grow. I had a decision to make. Either I let him continue to suffer and eventually lose him that way or I could decide to give him pain relief and let him go peacefully. I went with the second option, and a few days into him being home, hospice came and we decided morphine was the best option for our little guy. They told me that after a few days, maybe weeks, his body would slowly start to shut down and he would pass peacefully. I was prepared to spend time with him and make him comfortable until God decided he needed him. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that time. The next day, his body started to shut down. He was having trouble breathing. So we took him to the children’s hospital and called all of our loved ones so that they could come and say their goodbyes. Everyone got a turn in holding him and telling him they loved him. To this day, I am still upset that he took his last breath in his father’s arms. Because he was barely around when this was happening. But I know it happened for a reason.

I fell into a deep depression after this. And somehow ignored the fact that my body was not healing and i was losing a lot of blood since giving birth 4 weeks earlier. One day, i woke up and i couldn’t get out of bed. I was pale as a ghost and my mom instantly panicked. They rushed me to the ER. There; they told us I was almost completely out of blood and had they waited even another hour, I would be dead. I got a blood transfusion and that was that.

After all of this, I realized I still had a little girl at home I needed to fight for. I couldn’t keep her in the abusive situation we were in. So I left. One night while he was out, I packed as much as I could of hers and my things into a backpack and I left. I never looked back.

Fast forward to 2017, I met this amazing man. Who loves me and my daughter. Who takes care of us. Who loves us unconditionally. I married him in February 2019 and we have a baby girl, Ava Mae, on the way & due October 5th. He encouraged me to get maternity pictures done because I’d never had the experience. And I’m so glad I did. My daughter chose to not be in any of them because she wants to wait until her sister is here to get newborn ones done with her. Which I respected.

Life has been a rollercoaster. I’ve been through things in my short life that some people don’t go through in their entire life time. But I really believe it’s for a reason. God would never put me through anything that I cannot handle. And now I have a guardian Angel who is looking over both of his sisters and myself. Nothing more comforting than that.