New Mother/1993-1994

Momma always said she wanted us to have our own children so we would know the pain and the heartache and the sacrifice.

I dressed Emma in the blue and white Mickey Mouse kimono momma bought for her. I got to hold he a little bit today, but I don’t think Emma liked me very much. Every mother feels that her newborn doesn’t like her, well, at least that is what momma told me. I looked through the glass of the nursery, she was weeping and whimpering in the tiny glass crib. I made her that way sad. All of the days I wept during my pregnancy. I have since found out that my chemistry affected her chemistry.

I wanted to bond with her a little bit before they took her picture, but she was so filled with mucous. I’ll probably be too “tosca” with her, you know rough. She’s so delicate and fragile. I’ll probably kill her by accident, not holding her the right way.

Dr. Singh, her pediatrician is supposed to check her today. He was Mia’s pediatrician when she was born. I hope I didn’t put her back in her little glass crib to abruptly. Truly, I’m terrified to be such a little angel’s mother. After all, Gary gave me a little girl. Emma. Now he has two daughters Athena whose 15, and my baby Emma, whose only hours old. Everyone at the nursery tells me she’s darling, she really is, I’m not being biased, she really is beautiful.

Please God give me the wisdom to be a good mother to her. Please help me to love her “unconditionally” and let me let others in her life, love her “unconditionally” Let her bring me such joy and peace as I have not experienced with those I have loved before. Take care of her or me God. I entrust her to your care, be there for my Emma, don’t let me already have hurt her. I’d rather die than to have hurt this child.

I’ve had Emma one whole week. It feels like I’ve always had her and that we’ve always been one person. I cannot imagine my life without her, everyday I grow more and more dependent on her, every hour I seem to need her o much. How can I ever go back to the woman that loved Gary so much?

Emma is nearly 2 weeks old. I am so in love with her. Could look at her face for days at a time. I never get tired of looking at her, everything about her is “happiness.” Her diapers don’t smell even when I am so “tired.” I am strengthened by her presence, she gives me the strength, rather God give me strength through her spiritually. A child always makes a woman stronger, perhaps being a single parent gives me more strength than not.

I wouldn’t trade all of the heartache of the past if I wouldn’t have my child. I’d gladly bleed all over again just to hold my child close to me. I’d gladly die all over again in labor t look at my child’s face at night. I’d not trade all of those difficult sometimes heart-wrenching days and nights of my pregnancy. I’d do it all over again, even knowing I’d be “dumped”. I’d conceive her all over again, and never hear from her father, there are just some people you cannot go one minute without. Em is such a person in my life. I thought I was the “big loser” when I was first rejected by Gary, a four -time loser at love. I was vulnerable, frightened and I lost my slim shape. No one was looking at me. I got a lot of rash around my eyes and resembled a raccoon. I dressed in raged and owned one bra for my growing breasts. I could barely afford a cheap black pair of maternity pants, my feet swelled, my self-esteem plummeted to an all-time low, but now, I would do it all over again, hurt all of those long and at times lonely months, wishing her father had been with me, especially when she moved.

But now I realize I am the winner and Gary turned out to be biggest loser of all. I lost lovers in life, he lost children. In the process he has lost himself, the real humanity.

Now I know I am somebody. I am somebody’s mother. I am a mother, and only God can take that away from me. Now, Gary can never hurt me again with his indifference, only the indifference of my child would kill me.

I am sitting on the sofa with my daughter Emma, she is nearly a month old. I marvel at this. I never imagined that I could be a mother, but the past year has given me a child. I had to go through the pregnancy without her father. He left me in the 4th month. Actually, he left me before I conceived her, he was with me just long enough to conceive her with me. I called him later to tell him

I was pregnant. I did write him and telephone him prior to conceiving her. After he was with me I felt the best thing to do was just to forget about him. It was once again an unrequited-love .

In retrospect, I don’t know why I told him I was pregnant. I guess to be able to tell Emma that her father knew of her existence. He knows the fact that he doesn’t care is another matter entirely. About myself I’ve been treated likes slut before, but his treatment of Emma who was yet to be born, sickens me. She is nearly a month old and he himself has not attempted to see her.

And now I know this year must be the first of many years, must actually be the beginning of a life, without mention of him.

Emma’s blessing was yesterday, that is her life was dedicated to God, the sustainer of the universe. My whole family (with the exception of Misi, who’s in the Air Force in Oklahoma) was there. It was a very important day for Emma, probably the most important day of her very young life My one hope is that she will be a member of the body of Christ someday. Without a father, life will be doubly hard. I now realize she will probably never know or even see her natural father. There are times I look upon her round pink cheeks with sadness. I fell I failed her as a mother. It is a mother’s job to keep a father interest, and I couldn’t get him to care about us at all.

I am 79% over him, perhaps it is best he went to Texas. Wouldn’t it have hurt more if his indifference was local. I asked Pastor MacColm to pray for Gary yesterday, to pray for his salvation. There is nothing I can say to myself to stop the hurt I felt and still felt and still feel at times. Truly God has made the passage of time a healer. I loved him. I do not much care about those who say, “you cannot feel for someone right away.” Everyone I have wanted to marry within the first month or so. Valencia, Brouwer, Doug, and of course Emma’s father, Gary. I hurt even more for Gary than the rest. I suppose because he is my child’s father. And I know I Shall never see him again. Every day I ask God to sustain me, and to give me strength for the baby who needs me. I have not even made on mark on my body, in eleven months. I’ve meant to but something in me makes me feel the futility in it all, in abusing my body.

I remember, Gary said, in my third month of pregnancy “if I were going to leave I would have already left.” I remember wanting to believe him, but something deep in my psyche would not let me believe him, I sneered, I had become a cynic by the time of my first pregnancy. I want to return to innocent, I want to desperately return to innocence, my youth, my goodness, in Emma I see this, my lost youth, my last chance for recapturing my faith in the love I wanted to have for humanity. Perhaps, there is no more hope for me, but I see hope in her eyes, in her smile, and in her own precious life, in the life two other lives that felt ruined helped to create.

In her future, I see the possibility of re-creating myself, of healing myself, of being innocent again. God has given me that rare chance, the fresh prospect of discovering life again.

[ED1]che