Pregnant Out Of Wedlock
That good ole monthly flow should have started Monday, November 11. I was sure it would, I kept telling myself it would, because why wouldn’t it?
I struggled to conceive when I was adamantly trying — and married — and had lost two in the first trimester. The last one we said goodbye to was after two thriving ultra sounds, a heart beating to prove its life. Then on May 11, 2018 I lost that baby so fast and so painfully, I couldn’t imagine trying to put myself through this again.
Plus…only a few months later, my marriage ended and my whole life blew up.
When Kevin and I started dating the next year, he’d said he didn’t think he would want another kid since I have two and he has two and if we got married, that’s already four whole entire kids.
I was devastated at the idea that I was done adopting or bearing children, that this could be the extent of my motherhood. I struggled with that, we had some long talks about it, and at the “end of the day,” he said he is open to adopting or trying for a biological kid one day if we got married.
“That’s all I’d hope for: if we got married, can we at least revisit it? It wouldn’t be for awhile anyways.” I don’t love saying DONE NEVER AGAIN THE END about things, so the conversation was to be revisited.
Our short-lived dating months unfolded more into an unexpected married-like life, and everything shifted.
Of course we talked about getting married one day, and we revisited the idea about maybe adding a baby to the already four boys we collectively had. I mean we were cute, our kids are cute, why wouldn’t we EVENTUALLY attempt to add a baby sister?! Once we were married, if we made it to that point.
A lot about how our relationship progressed was not how I would have chosen. I’m trying to unlearn a lot about the way I cave + conform to other’s desires and expectations.
There is no real Dating After Divorce guide or set of rules — the consensus I’ve gotten from every woman I’ve talked to who has been divorced and tried dating is: it’s weird and clunky.
In hindsight — because we all know it is 20/20 — I see how easily I can justify things done against me, things I would never do to someone else especially someone I sincerely love.
But this post isn’t about that. This post is about me, pregnant…”out of wedlock.”
Those words and that phrase and this BOX I now fit in is one that I swore up and down (internally) I was “better” than. It’s not even that I have ever consciously thought less of humans who get pregnant without being married, it is that I thought of myself as so much different…special… someone who just wouldn’t do that. It is twisted and prideful and arrogant, and this is a whole journey of being humbled.
This mindset says more about me and how I view certain circumstances than the people who find themselves in those circumstances. Now I am in said circumstance, and as it happens, I have found grace and beauty.
But on the real: me? Pregnant? Not married or even with the guy? Noooo. Not me. I live life on purpose, I am intentional, I am aware. Plus it’s difficult to get pregnant anyways, and my chances to miscarry are higher than my chances to carry.
LOL at me.
Tuesday, November 12 I went into Safeway immediately after dropping my 3 year olds, Sage and Ira, off at pre-school. Kevin was still in bed, it was 7:45 am, I looked a tired mess going into Safeway, but I needed to take a test to prove to myself there is not a baby preventing my womanly-cycle.
Because people apparently steal pregnancy tests, there was a sign telling me to talk to customer service where they should have been stored. So I walked my sleepy, sick self over to the only cashier, waited in the ridiculously long line, and asked, “Hey, where are the pregnancy tests?”
Quite curtly she told me to go stand by them near her manager’s office, so I did.
There were a lot of feelings (hormones) in me making it super hard work not to cry.
I stood there, saw the manager, and nodded at her while trying to force a smile. The moment her manager walks out the office to help me, the checker who is four aisles away decides to shout across the store, “SHE NEEDS A PREGNANCY TEST!” and immediately the long line of people are just staring at me.
My cheeks burn hot and I nod and say with a shaky voice, “I could have told you that, she didn’t need to shout it in front of everyone…”
The manager is super calm and states, “Yes, I will talk to her about that.”
I then start sobbing, “This is just a really vulnerable thing, you know?” Okay I wasn’t sobbing, but anytime I cry in public it feels like I am sobbing — it feels like I am an ugly eye sore that is overwhelming and too much, and Lord, I don’t want anyone to feel the need to try and comfort me. But really, I was just crying a little because I was overwhelmed and I assumed they thought I was an irresponsible teenager since I didn’t have make up on.
I get the only test available, purchase it for waaaay too much money, I go home, I take the test: negative.
Wednesday: no flow.
Thursday: no flow.
Aren’t those tests supposed to, like, work before you even are to expect Aunt Flo?
Friday November 15. I pee on that second expensive stick, and boom shaka-laka, within seconds it is screaming at me a Big Fat:
YES+
I have about 30 entire seconds of fluttery excitement. There is LIFE in my womb!
I immediately tell Kevin.
He is so shocked — doesn’t say anything.
I leave to take Sage and Ira to school and then run errands because my brain is imploding.
Those 30 seconds of joy quickly slammed out of me and in rushed suffocation.
I am not experiencing the elated, blissful feelings you might assume… but I also didn’t feel like that when I found out I was pregnant (and then miscarried) in 2018…even married.
YOU SEE: Me and pregnancy have ISH together. We have big feelings, grief, sadness, and fear wrapped up within our relationship.
I have been betrayed by my body with pregnancy—cheated—I don’t trust the two of them together.
When I found out I was pregnant in February 2015: I was stoked. We had been trying for over two years, my husband and I used clomid + tracked my temperature and whole entire self + I was on a special autoimmune diet + did all the things. You know, like head stands after sex. So when I was first ever pregnant, I was so excited.
Then I miscarried.
Since that first miscarriage, pregnancy and I just struggle.
I will never be pregnant and naive again…I know the throes of loss from the womb and then trauma through birth.
But now? There are so many added layers, my mind feels broken. My soul is crushed. I am confused.
Now it is November 15, 2019 and my marriage ended just a year and some change earlier and I am acting married when I’m not and I am somehow pregnant and I also just know in my gut there is something deeeeeeply wrong between us but I cannot pin point it?
Now I am “pregnant out of wedlock” and with someone I love…but we both know neither of us were ready to date.
The baby in my belly woke me up to the urgency in addressing the brokenness built between us, embedded in our relationship.
And what kind of pressure is THAT to put on a baby the size of a flaxseed?
The shame, you guys.
The shame that covered me like a cloak was heavy, dark, and suffocating. It wasn’t even shame that I had “sex outside of marriage,” which is essentially the Scarlet A Sin…it was that I was pregnant but unsure about if we would even have a chance to ever be a healthy family for this baby.
I felt the (self) pressure to be perfect slam right into the reality that I am far from perfect. I felt a level of irresponsibility for this child’s life — like I just carelessly threw it into a pile of dysfunction I was trying (once again!) so hard to analyze into disappearing.
Kevin had about two hours of shock that morning…then turned straight into This Is So Great Let’s Get Married Today mode.
I low-key panicked: married today? In the next 9 months?
We felt far from marriage, but I couldn’t exactly tell you why at the time. There was just something in my spirit that knew marriage wasn’t the step if I wanted a healthy, thriving, emotionally + spiritually safe home for myself and my kids. Not yet.
What I did know and stated out loud multiple times to the few people who we told early on was that I would not marry someone just because I was pregnant with them.
I had already survived a divorce, left a dysfunctional marriage, and was coparenting well with my children’s father — I wouldn’t set myself and my kids up for more dysfunction just because I was pregnant.
My mom was the first person we called — my small mind didn’t know how she’d respond: she responded with nothing but love + support. She was ecstatic, knowing every baby is worth loving and celebrating no matter how they come. I have been asked a lot about how my family has felt about this baby — I am super proud to share that my family has been very supportive and full of love.
We went to our friends—who also happen to be our pastor + his wife—and told them the evening we found out. I simply craved support from people who are wise + gracious, and sincerely carry the spirit of the living God in them. Who don’t think they have all the answers for every single situation or journey.
They were so safe for my suffocated self, prayed over this beautiful soul in my womb, and spent time talking with us about not putting pressure To Get Married Right Away.
Which was a super relief to me, because I was raised in the Christian Generation where the culture made you feel like This Is The Worst Sin and the only way to redeem this sin is to get married.
God has blown up so many boxes I’ve had built into my thinking, but I have realized through the last 28 weeks of this pregnancy that there is still so much undoing to be done in me. I didn’t actually feel like the baby was a sin, but I felt this pressure to walk around knowing everyone else probably did. More on these things later.
Slowly during the first trimester I shared with select people about this baby…but only people I truly felt safe with emotionally. People I felt would not immediately react poorly or make my already bleeding heart more wounded. I was a real heap of anxiety and self-hatred for awhile.
I didn’t want to pretend I was excited, when I really wasn’t. That felt gross and inauthentic, and I wasn’t about to just fake my way as a happy family for others to see because it’s cuter. And it is, it is way cuter.
This pregnancy could have looked waaaaay cuter and picture perfect with that tall beautiful man I love and our gorgeous children, all blending together: but the reality is that it has not been cute. It has been one of the most painful, lonely, sad, journeys I’ve walked.
Not only was I grappling with: will this baby even stick in my womb? If it doesn’t, then what? Will I wrestle with hating myself because I wasn’t excited? Will I be grateful its in heaven instead of entering a super broken situation where his or her parents may not even be together?? The grief would be so layered.
I was also grappling with knowing how much I struggled to be excited for people like me, years and years ago: women who got pregnant "on accident,” not married, and not even with a man they should probably be with at the time…got pregnant and weren’t excited. Like …now I am in THAT box? The community of women who unintentionally hurt the women who are trying so hard to conceive? I have experienced first-hand that grief is valid in all the spaces of pregnancy: wanted/unwanted/planned/unplanned/stoked/shocked/etc.
And then the reality that eventually birth would be upon us: my labor + delivery with Ira was one of the most physically and emotionally traumatic events. I had to focus on setting that particular piece down, and get through one day at a time. Nine months will fly by, but I was only in month one and two and three, and I needed to get through those + everything that needed to happen, without totally crumbling.
hi baby! 12 weeks strong!
side note is that I really thought I was growing huge and fast…but what? Like, did I actually just eat some burritos? come on, sis, you tiny.
This photo.
Taken the day before our relationship blew up + changed forever.
I had just entered the second trimester. Still throwing up.
We broke up. Making me not only pregnant out of wedlock, but then single.
Pregnant and single?
I felt like I was living a reality TV show. Maybe I was being punk’d.
But I knew that if we ever wanted to have a healthy and sustainable relationship, we had to start over.
We had to truly break up, to fully separate, to be done as a couple and family…to get on a path individually that could provide stability and health and growth to maybe one day come together again. Maybe.
Because we were only getting worse.
Our kids were affected, I was miserable, he was miserable, it was all just bad.
And a baby was (is) coming.
For those of you wanting all the nitty gritty details that
#1 you aren’t entitled to and
#2 I don’t need to share for your validation and
#3 won’t change your life…
… here is the thing I have been learning over the years: you can only hide your true self from an intimate partner for so long. Goes both ways. You can only swoon with smooth words for so long; actions speak far louder, and words soon follow the heart. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Jesus said it, so its real). You can only prevent that from happening for so long.
Unhealth is unhealth. Abuse is abuse, and there doesn’t need to be laying of hands on another human for it to be abuse. Dysfunction is dysfunction. Ignored trauma from our past won’t be kept silent forever.
We make decisions along the way, and we get to keep making the same decisions or change those decisions into better ones.
We get to choose to chase health or not…and this was me choosing a path to health + healing when the other person simply wasn’t.
Because…I had two kids I was responsible for…and a third now on the way.
15 weeks pregnant
After we broke up I found out a lot more that solidified this decision.
Tuesday January 21 was the last day that house was home for any of us.
I was lucky (#blessed) to have found a couple in our church community who had a two bedroom + bathroom basement space open for us. I moved in about a week later.
I barely slept. I missed injections. I threw up a lot. The details of those weeks and months are dark.
It is now April 28th.
The bulk of the first and second trimester were spent throwing up, sobbing, not sleeping, and incredibly shook. So much anxiety. Grief. Stress.
With confidence I can tell you the heaps of shame I carried around with me were from myself + the fear of what others thought about me. And of course from others directly; not many at all, but a few.
Shame from…
The overwhelming expectation that people think they deserve to know why K and I needed to break up … the truth that most of my friends will never understand the depths of grief I carry with this, nor can they understand that I sincerely can’t just get over it and see/treat everything in black and white … the overwhelming reality that I don’t trust myself and invite other (wise + respectable) people’s opinions, which weighs me down into more shame because it is impossible to please them all — but at the end of the day, have I even sat and prayed about where the spirit is leading ME on MY journey??
This isn’t anyone’s journey but mine…and He has been constantly pulling me in, inviting me to sit with Him instead of the expectations of others. Even those I trust and respect.
Never — since the moment I found this life inside me — did I experience shame from the Father. He breathes life, and He breathed and kept breathing and is still breathing into this one.
Even though much of the time I have laid in bed crying, wondering: How is this my life?
I am slowly coming to accept: it IS my life.
And even amidst all the unexpectedness, the disappointments + devastation, the being let down when I hoped so hard and invested so much… even being pregnant and unwed and single as the sole provider for this baby human… it is still a beautiful life.
Grace has led me to a place where I am nothing but grateful for the little babe in me. I don’t hate myself as much, but still wrestling with disappointment about how we got to here, but proud of the (imperfect) trajectory we are now on.
I love this baby so, so much. Feeling baby move is one of the most special, surreal, sacred experiences…one I will cherish forever and not take for granted.
I am so excited to watch my boys become big bros — it fills my heart watching them already love their baby so much. Planning out helping with diapers, what baby will look like, and where baby will sleep.
I know without a doubt this little soul being birthed from within me is meant to be here, and this life has already changed mine.
Life…so unexpected, but so beloved.
Thoughts + posts coming up next:
Birth: Feelings, Fears, Hopes, Plans
Differences Between Pregnancies (this is my fourth…believing it to be my second live birth!)
Pregnancy Trimester Update: emotionally, physically, spiritually?
Questions That Threw Me: Why Didn’t You Have An Abortion? + Are You Placing This Baby For Adoption?
Many people have asked about my registry! I have been BLOWN AWAY by the love and support being sent my way — it seems every day there are a few more items sent and I am just over here a mess of gratitude! You can see it here. Anything on there will help me parent these THREE little people!
