Mommy and Me... Literally

Hey guys… sorry its been awhile, but life has been crazy. You will soon see…

Well I don’t even know where to begin. I have been working my butt off, and when I get a free moment I am trying to catch up with friends and family members.

The most important thing that has happened that you all need to be caught up with is the baby’s father. I left off last time with the baby’s father being the cliffhanger. Him and I met while working at Splash Mountain. We met last June, and have had a very up and down relationship while he was gone in Texas after his program ended in August. In November we worked things out, and started to head in the right direction. He got into another College Program with Disney, and was moving back out here for me and him to work things out. We talked all the time and things were going great. His program was starting in February and he was moving out here in January to live with us. He flew out January 12^th, and it was perfect. We went to Disney, and had a great time. Everything was awesome; I was super happy, and loved every minute with him.

Then after he had been here for about two weeks, things started changing. He started hanging out at Vista Way, which is one the housing places for the College program students. He was gone all the time, and I never saw him. When I did see him he was tired from being out all night, and I started to get very upset. The end of January I went to California to visit one of my best friends to celebrate our birthday’s, which were earlier in January. He decided that while I was gone he was going to go stay with his grandparents, who live about twenty minutes away from me. I was fine with that, because I understood why he wouldn’t stay at the house by himself. While I was gone we got into a fight, because, according to him, he got a message from a guy on Facebook saying that Mike shouldn’t be with me, and that I was a waste of time. This was the beginning of the end…

I came back from California, and we didn’t speak that much, especially with all the stress that I had on my mind of the possibility of being pregnant. After I found out that I was pregnant, I had to pick a time to tell Mike. I found out the weekend of Super Bowl, and the Monday after was when he was starting his new program. He was as happy as a kid in the candy with all the money in the world about this program, and I just couldn’t tell him until after he moved in. The week that I found out that I was pregnant, I did everything I could do to start fixing my relationship with Mike. If we were about to have a baby together, we needed to be on the best of terms, and he needed to be in a good mood when I told him the news. We got him moved in all perfect, and had a great few days together, and planned on going to Disney together one day, and I knew that this would be the perfect time to tell him. We would have a wonderful time at the Parks, and then after I would tell him, yup that was my plan and I felt wonderful about it.

We get the Parks, and we are having a wonderful time, he finally got to see Captain EO, and we were getting along perfectly. Then he got a phone call, it was from Beth*. Beth is his ex-girlfriend that he dated before me, and they had problems. His mood did a complete 180. Fuck. Now I was nervous. We leave Epcot, and are on our way back to Vista, and I drop the bomb. He goes completely silent, and gets out of my car, with the words, I will text you once I can think straight. I was ok with that, I already had my time to freak out, and I knew that he was going to need his time too. About five minutes later I get a text from him saying that he is not ready to be a dad, and he can’t do it. He wants me to get rid of the baby, and is crying on his bed at the thought of having a child. I let it go, because I know he is just reacting. I try to calm him down, but its not working. I told him that I was going to give him his space, and to not to text me for a couple of days, which he does, and when I do finally hear from him, he is still saying the same thing. He states that isn’t how he planned his life, and all of that nonsense. So now I am getting frustrated. I pictured us being happy, and him growing up for me, because I thought he cared about me. All of my friends completely agreed with me, and couldn’t believe at how he was acting, and they try to reach out to him, and he ignores them, or tells them the same thing. A brick wall, and a brick wall isn’t what a baby needs…

Two weeks later I am disgusted and absolutely completely empty when looking at him. I have no feelings for him, and wonder what Mike I am looking at, the liar, the cheater, the immature child, or the bad guy pretending to be good? Either way I could care less. Reminiscing from a childhood favorite “Dear Mike, I hate your stinking guts. You make me vomit. You're scum between my toes!”

I know I jumped ahead A LOT but that is for another time…

Before you go on with your day, I ask that you please say a prayer for everyone you have in your family that you love. Everyday is precious, and tomorrow is never promised. During this break I had my wonderful friends loose someone that is very precious to them. This was the probably the nicest, hardworking, and wonderful family I have ever been able to meet, and they are going through a very difficult time, so please just say a prayer for not only your own family but this family. Life is not fair, and sometimes we wonder why God does what he does, but through everything that I have gone through on my own personal level, I have come to realize that even though we know that we are good people, and haven’t done anything wrong to deserve such pain, that we can’t look at things as God punishing us, but that he knows that we are strong enough to suffer such pain, and become better people through this. God uses the strong people in life to help others, and to stop things that happened to us, from happening to other people who are not strong enough to endure such pain.

Happy and Disappointed

All of my friends and ‘family’ in Orlando knew about the baby, and they were excited, and very supportive of my choice. It made the whole situation a lot better and made me even more excited about the baby. I had also told my two best friends, Elena and Erin* who live in California. Elena, who I have known since I was in the 9^th grade, and we are practically sisters, was supportive and knew that I was doing what I felt best and was going to support me no matter what. Erin was very upset and shocked by the news. She was very conflicted with the news and wondered why I wasn’t going to have an abortion. She is slowly starting to come around to the situation, and being more supportive. I now had to tell my family… which would not be easy. My mother had me at the age of 18, and her and my father did not last. Telling my mother that I was pregnant was the most terrifying thing that I could ever imagine. I never imagined my life happening this way, I planned on being married and all that ‘hoopla’ everyone talks about, but life is crazy and it very rarely happens how we plan. I wanted to have some type of plan for telling my mom, so I wanted to contact my blood father and ask him how things happened when they found out about me. That completely blew up in my face…

Have you ever watched a really bad movie or TV show, and the way gossip spreads when one person calls another, who calls another, calls another, and so on and so forth…? And after it’s all done you say to yourself, that would never happen in real life. Well it does. I am living proof. At that exact moment I wondered where in the hell is the TV crew?!? My blood father Charles* talked to my Aunt, who talked to my Grandma, who tried to call me, but I didn’t answer, so she called my MOM to find out if I really was pregnant. I received a text message from my mom asking me what the hell was going on. So now my mother heard rumors, and I had to be the one to confirm the rumor. See what I mean? Crazy does happen.

“I thought you had your head on straight.” “I am so disappointed, and hurt.” “I never imagined you would make this mistake.” “Your life is never going to be the same.” “How could this happen?” “You were a better person when you were 21, I don’t know what has happened to you.” Those were just some of the things that my mother Sally* said to me that still linger in my head. It was a disaster. This happened on Super Bowl Sunday, and we still are having a hard time talking. My mother is my best friend, so to be going through this is very difficult.

My blood father’s side of the family is the opposite of my mother; they are happy and supportive of the baby. Its extremely difficult having two opposite reactions. When I talk to one group of people I get support, and the other I can’t even talk to without getting into a fight. When I was 7 years old, my mother remarried, and that man Larry* has become my father. He has been there for me through everything. Which is why I consider him my father. So telling him was very difficult as well. He could either rip my head off like my mother, or be very calm and rational about it. He was very rational, and calm about it when I told him. He was obviously very disappointed, and upset, which is what I expected. But at the same time, he didn’t scream, yell, or anything else. He stayed calm and asked questions about what I was going to do, who the father was, and what we were going to do.

Speaking of the baby's father…

* All names have been changed.

23 and Pregnant

“Your test results came back, and they were positive.”

“Positive I’m pregnant or positive I’m not?”

“Positive you are pregnant. Congratulations.”

…phone hits the floor…

“Natesha…? We will see you on Monday correct for your ultrasound?”

“Yee…eee…sss”

“Okay, well… congratulations again.”

I would have thought that a nurse would be halfway expecting a woman to freak out when she is told that she is pregnant. I don’t know if this nurse has never had a woman start crying before on her, or if she was just still in her food coma from lunch. Either way I gave her an eventful afternoon. I was pretty positive that I was pregnant, but actually hearing someone confirm it over the phone through blood work was shocking. I knew instantly that abortion was just not going to be an option. So now I had to decide if I wanted to do adoption, or actually keep the baby. I feel like so many people go through situations very similar to mine, but since we are ‘adults’ people don’t give us too much attention, or help really because we should ‘know’ what to do. I really don’t think age matters too much when it comes to being pregnant for your first time. If I was 18, 23, 27, or 32, married or not, I would still like to hear from other people, and would like to know that others are going through the same things, or whatever they are going through. I am now 9 weeks along, and have had some rough times, experiences, and discussions with people, so I feel like people need to know that just because someone isn’t 16 & pregnant doesn’t mean that they can’t have a story worth telling, to help others become stronger.

Lets rewind a few… I am 23 years old, I live with three of my good girlfriends, and we have three dogs, yes three dogs. We have a four-year-old pocket beagle named Scooby, a pit bull named Hercules and Boston terrier named Riley who will be two on June 28, and July 4. Needless to say our house is already a circus, and now we are about to add a baby to the chaos. I was born in Utah, moved to California when I was six, and I moved to Orlando Florida almost two years ago, after graduating from college from Arizona State University. Another wrench in the mix, all of my blood family is thousands of miles away.

Once I finally calmed down from hearing the news, I was positive that I was keeping the baby. I just felt this connection, bond, and knew that I couldn’t carry a baby for nine months and then just give it away. So once that decision was made it was time to start telling the world, aka my family and friends, oh and of coarse the father, about the news. My one roommate SVD was with me when I got my blood work done, and when I found out the news, so she was my rock, and support from the very start. It was now time to move on to the rest of crew. Thank sweet baby Jesus for technology because all I had to do was send out one huge mass text message, and the word was out. From the very beginning I had all of the support, and love I could have ever asked for from all of my friends, who have become my extended family and I see many of them as my sister. But friends are one thing, family, like Moms, Dads, and Grandparents… well that’s a whole different ball game…