Facing the World

Another senior picture.

Telling your friends and family that you are pregnant is supposed to be a joyous occasion, unless you’re 18 and just graduated high school a month ago. The thought of telling people was terrifying to me, and I waited as long as I possibly could, and most of the reactions went exactly how I thought they would.

I called my best friend back home almost immediately after talking to my boyfriend. I knew that conversation was safe. I also knew that she would be surprised but also supportive, which she was. She kept asking me what I was going to do, and I just kept repeating I don’t know. But I knew with 1000% of my being that when I was saying “I don’t know,” it did not include an abortion or giving the baby up for adoption. I was keeping the baby, and that was the only thing I knew at the moment.

The next phone call was to my mom. It was a few days after finding out. I was trying to avoid the sound of disappointment in her voice that I knew I would hear when I finally told her. The thought of it crushed me, but I knew I was going to need her help through this pregnancy, so she needed to know.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi hun, how are you?”

“Well….I have something to tell you. I’m pregnant.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

She then said, “I’m going to have to call you back,” and hung up.

Me and my Mom.

I was heartbroken. I knew she was probably crying on the other side of the country or asking herself a million questions about where she went wrong. One of the worst feelings in the world is disappointing your parents. The sting of it pierces right through your entire body and leaves you aching for a long time.

She did call me back, and she was very loving and supportive, of course. We talked about how I was having the pain, and she said that it could probably have been implantation of the egg that was causing that, but to keep her informed of if it came back. She was a labor and delivery nurse at the time (also a lactation consultant…. can you see why I needed her, besides she was my mom and of course I would need her?!), so I knew she knew what she was talking about. There were tears, but the conversation ended well.

My parents weren’t together, so I had the pleasure (not really) of having to tell my father separately, and I was so petrified! The level of being scared was the worst with him. I knew I had gone against what I was taught in the church growing up, and I knew he would be disappointed because of that and then just his own disappointment. Double the disappointment from him was a crushing thought to me, and I didn’t know if I could handle it.

My mother ended up telling my sister that she should call me when she was there visiting later on one evening. She called and when I told her I was pregnant (I don’t know why, but I wasn’t afraid at all of her judgment of the situation. Whether she agreed with it or not, I knew she would be supportive.), she had to get a paper bag to breathe into because she was hyperventilating. Now, if you know my sister, you know she has a bit of flair for dramatics, but I have no doubt she was shocked, but maybe not that much.

Me and my sister.

After she gained control of herself, I begged her to go over to our father’s house and tell him for me. I explained how petrified I was to tell him and thought maybe her telling him would somehow soften the blow when he called me. So, she went over like a good sister at 9:30 at night to tell him. He thought she was pregnant (she was engaged to be married at the time), but when she said it was me, he was shocked. He did call me right away and was upset that I didn’t just tell him myself. I, of course, didn’t explain to him how petrified of his disappointment I was, I just said I was scared. I don’t remember much more of our conversation, but I could hear the disappointment and the worry about me in his voice.

For the next couple of weeks, I sat with those conversations in my brain, swirling around. I knew how disappointed everyone was in me, but I could also feel their support. I didn’t know it at the time, but I carried so much shame around with me from these conversations. Shame that I let my parents down, shame that I “didn’t do it the right way”, shame that I was never going to have a “normal” life, lots of shame.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but this shame shaped how I responded to motherhood too, which we’ll talk about I’m sure in the rest of this blog series. For now, I was just sitting in the weight of it all—the mix of disappointment, love, and uncertainty—trying to make sense of a life that suddenly looked nothing like I had planned.