Chapter 1: I'm Pregnant

“I’m pregnant.” Jeff was unloading the dishwasher and dropped the bowl in his hands onto the countertop. “What?!”

“You heard me. Don’t make me say it again.”

“When?”

“Your birthday.”

I was three months along already. I knew from the moment I got pregnant. I had lain awake in bed every night for the first 3 weeks just staring at the ceiling, not knowing what to do. Or how to tell him. Its not like we were on speaking terms. In fact, we usually tried to avoid each other.

During the first days and weeks I kept seeing that baby just slip out of my womb. Later I realized that this was a premonition. I had implanted low. But it didn’t slip out. It didn’t go away. And I had to tell him. Pretty soon everyone would know. I could hear the questions: “Do you think this is a good idea?” “What are you going to do?” “How did this happen?” And the inevitable “How long have you known?”

I had miscarried twice in my earlier years, once a year before we married and then again a year later, 3 months before I got pregnant with our daughter. After that I stopped telling people I was pregnant until I started getting funny looks from them, their eyes moving down to my stomach and back up to my face with that question in their eyes. The miscarriages were heartbreaking and I couldn’t bear that look of expectation and excitement in people’s faces. But this time was different. We had been done having children for a long time. The marriage wasn’t working. We had my boys and our daughter to raise. We thought it was enough. God had different ideas.