I am a 23 year old single mother of a wonderful little boy. He is almost always smiling, talking, or motoring around our house. But our story starts before he was ever even imagined.
In 2005, I started a job with Kelly Services. I was on 1st shift working on packaging items for Reader's Digest fund raising sales. Eventually my boyfriend moved to my area from Des Moines and started working at the same facility. By October, the clashes between my friends and my boyfriend were getting to me, and I needed time off. I chose to transfer to 3rd shift for a while. Unfortunately, my boyfriend followed.
The very night we were supposed to start 3rd shift, I was talking to a friend online about how the relationship had already ended. My now ex-boyfriend read it while I was getting ready for work and flipped out. He stabbed a bible on my bed, broke a katana over his knee, and irratically moved about the room. I placed myself as far away from him as possible until suddenly he stopped. He looked up at me and said, "Oh, there's laundry to do", grabbed the clothes hamper, and walked out the door.
I bolted. I went to a friend's house. He followed me. My friend wouldn't let him in the house and he crouched out in the cold, banging his head aganst my friend's car. The whole thing was insane.
Eventually I was able to move on. I stayed on 3rd shift because my ex continued to work on 1st. That December, they rehired a former employee who was going to college during the day. His name was Bryan, and he drove the forklift.
One night while maintenance was working on one of our machines on the American Baby line, Bryan and I were set to fix errors in some of the packages. We talked about anything that came to mind, and I happened to mention that I liked big, old trucks and was curious about who drove the old Chevy out in the parking lot. He laughed and said it was his. By the time we left work that morning, we had plans to hang out together.
Although it was March before we were officially dating, we had been together much longer. By early April, we had both been hired at new, better paying, more secure jobs. He was getting used to a swing shift, and I was once again back on a 2nd shift, like all the jobs I had before Kelly Services.
Mid April is my best friend's bithday. She turned 21 in 2006 so we were all over at another friend's house celebrating (Bryan was not 21 at that time, but would be that May, so he joined in on all the celebration, too). I spent most of the night trying to decipher Spanish from one of the other party-goers. At the time I thought it was really lucky that Bryan was so drunk he didn't realize this guy was hitting on me because Bryan was a very possessive person.
The very next day, I started to worry that something wasn't right. So I took a home pregnancy test. It revealed a faint positive. That night, Bryan and I went to Wal-Mart to buy more, just to be sure. After another positive, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor, who referred me to an OB/GYN in the next town over (my local hospital doesn't do deliveries anymore). I was lucky and placed under the only female Obstatrician at the hospital. The other choices would have been a man who looked like a pervert or the doctor who gave my mother a bad tubal ligectomy which almost killed her. I was firm the entire time that I did not trust male doctors.
The whole pregancy progressed fairly normally, although at 7 months, many people thought I couldn't be beyond 4 months along. Once again, I was lucky. I ended up buying 2 maternity shirts, but only because I liked the style. I still fit into all of my normal clothes, even the day I had my son.
On Monday, December 11th, 2006, I left work early to go to one of my check ups, which at this point (2 weeks before my due date) were happening every week. I left work at 2pm, and my appointment was at either 3 or 3:30pm. They took my blood pressure and said it was a bit high so they had me lay on my side for a few minutes before taking it again. It hadn't gone down. So I was taken to the maternity ward for observation.
I had been there for not even a half hour when they decided that, yes, I was going to be induced and more than likely, would give birth sometime early the next morning. I called Bryan and my mother, and send text messages to everyone else I could think of. They broke my water around 6pm, and I loved that epidural when it was finally given to me. Just before 10pm, I had to call my mother to get her back to the hospital because my doctor (who thank heaven was on call that night) decided I was ready to start pushing. She had been in Wal-Mart getting me books to keep me preoccupied because I had not planned on this happening so soon.
I started pushing around 10pm. I'd push a couple times and then rest, waiting for the next contraction. We talked about anything that came to mind, but the things I remember mostly were talking about pets, and that my doctor had gotten proffesional pictures done of her dogs. Later my mom said she thought that whole scene was hilarious, and nothing like what she had gone through.
After pushing for about 45 minutes, Justin Anthony came into the world at 11:49pm on Monday, December 11th. I still like to make people give me strange looks when I say that I worked almost a full day the day my son was born.
That first night in the hospital I barely slept. While I was waiting for my doctor to tell me I was fully dialated, they had wheeled past a friend of mine (the same friend whose house we were at celebrating our other friend's birthday... she found out she was pregnant about the same time as me), taking her to intensive care. She had her daughter via C-Section, and her daughter's blood had mixed with hers. This ususally wouldn't be too big of a problem, but my friend has AB- blood and her daughter's is positive. There is supposed to be a series of shots she should have had in this case, but for some reason was never told about them. (She had a different doctor.) I was able to wave at my friend as she was rolled past. Later, when the LifeFlight helicopter headed out (I had a direct view of it from my room), I wondered who it might be, but didn't connect the two. I was a little preoccupied.
That night Bryan slept on the little couch in my hospital room. I still have a picture of him on it. Everything was progressing so nicely. I was at the happiest point in my life.
Over the next few months, I quickly adjusted to motherhood. Bryan was a bit different. He never really bonded with Justin. While I had to stay at home because I had these new responsibilities, Bryan didn't really see his life much diffrently. He was out every weekend at his best friend's apartment, about an hour away. I stayed at home and tried to keep things organized while caring for this new life. A couple times he was upset when he got home and we weren't there. But at no point did I ever think things had really changed.
On my way home from state bowling on April 1st, 2007, I was text messaging Bryan when he mentioned that he wasn't going to be home when I got there. I eventually talked to him on the phone and basically begged him to come home because I had a bad weekend and just wanted to spend time with him. He kept refusing.
It wasn't until I walked upstairs at home to put Justin to bed that I realised what had happened. All of Bryan's things were gone. It took me days to even comprehend what this meant for the plan we had. It was July before I found out what was really going on while I was home caring for my son.
Early in January 2007, Bryan met up with a girl at his best friend's appartment. I don't know if he had known her before or not, but immediately he was telling her they should have sex. He denied being engaged and at first didn't admit he had a child. Then he told her that I never allowed him to see Justin and that was why he never had him. I'm still not sure exactly when they started dating, but it was well before she helped Bryan move out of my house.
They had an on and off relationship while Bryan kept assuring me that he just couldn't live where we had made our home because it was too far from his family (it was only about 45 minutes). He told me things like he was going to choose our next house after I got mine sold, and that he still cared for me and loved me. I believed it all. Mostly because I didn't want my son coming from a broken family like I had.
It was August before I fully accepted that Bryan and I were through. I was finally able to think of the situation without getting mad or crying. It was also the first month Justin was to be receiving child support. The 1st due date came and went. No money. Finances were already tight because when Bryan was living with me, he would only pay a bill when I told him he had to because I had ran out of money. I had nearly maxed out my credit cards on food and diapers because he refused to help. I even had to pay the house payment this way a couple of times because his thousand dollar plus paychecks had never allowed anything beyond gas for his truck, fast food and beer.
Eventually, I received a couple checks in the mail before the automatic deposit was set up. By the time I had child support set, he had a lesser paying job. But it would still be enough to pay for most of my house payment and that would be a big help. Except he stopped paying in October. The last deposit made was on October 5th. At no point was he ever current on support, and I have kept a detailed record of this. As of January 2008, he is about 4 months behind in support, equalling nearly $2000. I've had to borrow much more than that from my parents just to keep my head above the waters, and I still don't qualify for any government help. I am told constantly I make too much money, even though my bills exceed my income by far, many of which are because of Bryan.
And yet, I am lucky. Things could be a whole lot worse for me. I have my home, I have my family, and most of all I have my son. Bryan is an idiot for not realising just how special this little boy is (he hasn't asked to see him in over a month and hasn't come to see him since early November).
I recently made a decision while organizing my house. I needed to get rid of things I didn't use anymore and planned to sell them on eBay. But instead of recycling this money into new dvds or clothes, I've decided to start a savings account for my son when I get enough money together. So, to build "Justin's Savings Fund", I'm going to put all proceeds from my eBay sales aside just for him. His "father" sure isn't going to do anything.
To view my eBay auctions, click here. This will take you to "My World" on eBay.
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