-1I sit here in the car cold and with tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. Never have I cried as much before as I have since I held that positive test in my shaking hands but the intensity of these emotions threaten to overwhelm my every moment. Emotions that come with finding out that you're carrying a baby and with not knowing what to do about the child growing inside your womb.
Days have passed since the ultrasound where I first saw you. Days where I have been unable to get your image out of my head. The image of your perfect little body that has already grown bigger inside my belly since then, the image of your arms and legs, your little heartbeat…my baby. My beautiful child. It's like you're permanently imprinted in my mind, begging me to keep you, to care for you, to not push you away and try and make my decision easier…to love you every day of our lives and I do want to I promise you that. It's just every time I think of you I think of him, I think of the pain he's caused me and the tears and they break my heart. I think of you right now as I sit in this dark car watching the world pass by and I think of you with intense, all consuming sadness, and I wonder what you did to deserve such a mess.
How I wish you hadn't been fathered by someone so heartless and so cruel my little baby. This would all be so much easier then. I can't believe such cruel words passed his lips tonight as I told him about your existence. The past few days as I've thought about you my heart has been filled with such love. Such fear but so much love. Speaking to Maggie I told her keeping you was an if but I'm not sure I could or should let you go and I think she knows that. She doesn't want me to make a mistake. She knows me a lot more than I ever give her credit for. I should take the time to get to know her a bit better too. She deserves that from me. You've shown me that.
I've wanted you for so long my little child ,but when your father said those things to me, about there still being time to terminate you, about how if there's anything he could do to hurry things along…it reminded me how much of a mistake he was and it shook me to the core. Here you are growing inside of me, his child, and there he was wanting rid of you as soon as possible, like you were an inconvenience, like you don't even matter. Like you're not that little person with arms and legs and a heartbeat. He didn't think of my feelings, about how it feels for me to be carrying a baby or how hard it was for me to tell him, he certainly didn't think of you, he just wanted you gone and the hate and hurt that he conjured in me towards him at that very moment was what caused me to say to him that why would I keep you because then I'd have to live with a constant reminder of him every day. I was so hurt and so very alone. It was lunch I'd been punched in the heart and it had shattered into millions of tiny pieces. I wanted some kind of reassurance but I got nothing. Then again that's all I ever got from Nathan. I didn't even really mean what I said. Not completely.
Please believe me when I say that would be the only reason for me not to have you. It would be so hard being reminded of such a cruel man every day and a relationship that at times made me be someone I detested. It would be especially hard after he left me standing in the hospital today feeling so lost and so broken , wondering how on earth someone could feel so little for a woman they once said they loved and their unborn child.
There's no lack of love on my part sweetheart. There's certainly no lack of fear either, I'm absolutely petrified, but not loving you is something I could never do. Sometimes I have found myself laying on the sofa at home with my hand over you inside me picturing what it would be like to have you there with me at that moment, gurgling in your moses basket, laying in my arms so fragile as I soothed you to sleep or nursed you, holding you against me so closely and feeling the warmth of your skin against mine. At work I find myself standing there with a palm over my stomach as if to protect you, to share in a moment that only you and I can have as mother and unborn child and yet here I am saying to both Maggie and Nathan that having you is an if. But like I said it's not that I don't want you. It's that Nathan's your father and I find it so hard to picture myself raising a baby that's his…but then you're not just a part of him are you? So maybe I could do it after all if I found the strength. It's just something that seemed to desert me the moment he left me standing there so alone.
I looked at little Jemima today, such a perfect little girl in need of so much love and protection and I pictured you my darling. I could see Maggie watching me with her, thinking how on earth could I be considering a termination when I obviously felt so much for such a little person. Having her tiny little fingers wrapped around one of mine conjured images of you doing the same to me one day, to your mummy. That's what I am after all isn't it? Even this early on? Your mummy. I just wish I felt more like one sometimes. Maybe then this would be an easier choice to make because right now I want to put a hand on my tummy and have some kind of sign that things will be okay. I can't bring myself to do it though, or to touch any part of something that might be his.
I am so sorry my baby that your father is the way he is and I'm so sorry that your mother is feeling so lost. I truly wish I wasn't sweetheart. I want nothing more than to find the happiness that comes with expecting a baby of your own. Maybe it'll come…maybe it won't. Just know that for now I'm just so, so sorry, for your fathers words, for my retaliation to them and for not being able to give you the complete love that you deserve right now as I try and find the strength to make a decision that will change the rest of my life. Thoughts of you do bring me happiness as well as the normal fear that comes with parenthood, please don't worry about that. I just feel so lost, and until I make the decision that is true to my heart I will be. I promise you one thing though I'll never not love you and there will never be a moment I wont think of you, my darling child.