Pride Over Pity (6 page)

My life wasn’t going to go back to the way it was even after my baby was born. My body might go back to the way it was (well it sort of would, with hard work), but from that moment on I would be responsible for another life. Oddly, that responsibility wasn’t as scary to me as it might be to others. What I was starting to realize was that this baby was going to give me a chance to have real family, to have someone who would never leave me.

Despite the chaos and uncertainty of my circumstances, I was definitely starting to feel a deep maternal connection to my baby. I still wished I was at least a decade older, but the experience of being pregnant was so intense and magical nothing could prevent me from appreciating the beauty of it. The existential experience of having a life growing inside of me turned each individual kick into shock waves that I felt throughout my whole body. There is no relationship that can compare. It’s symbiotic. It’s unspoken love. I was never alone anymore. When Jo left me in the middle of the night or my mom wouldn’t speak to me, there was no endless emptiness. I had someone with me at all times.

The pure beauty of it all was truly a miracle to me. The world as I had known it wasn’t magical or filled to the brim with good wishes and happiness. But now, for the first time in my life, I suddenly found my life filled with something I had never known before: hope. Hope that I could be a good mother. Hope for a happy future with my child.

But what would that future be? Would I be able to attend higher education? That was always my first question when I saw pregnant teens. How is she going to finish school so she can provide for her baby? I decided that I wouldn’t allow myself to turn into a statistic. I would push past the odds and not let numbers decide my future.

Meanwhile, although I may have obtained a newfound positivity when it came to my future with the baby, things with Jo were not going so well. He had been working late nights at Taco Bell and had taken a shift to the shady side. He was spending less time at home and seemed to be skipping out on his classes at Northampton Community College. I began to worry that he was doing something other than going to work or school when he left the house. I suspected he might be having an affair with one of his coworkers. Every night when I went to bed, knots formed in the pit of my stomach.

Mr. Koser is still an important person in my life. In this photo Isaac is playing around in his classroom.

Since I didn’t have a car of my own, I asked a friend to take me to Taco Bell in the middle of the night to check on Jo. This wasn’t the first time I had stormed into the fast food place at a ridiculous hour. In fact, I was a repeat offender. Sometimes they’d be just working or Jo’s face wouldn’t make an appearance at all. I wanted to catch them doing something explicit enough that I could at least have some closure and know that I wasn’t losing my mind. This time, I decided to confront Jo and his coworker directly, but they sat me down and denied anything was going on between them. I had no solid proof besides Jo’s sketchy behavior to go on, so I left.

But the knot in my stomach and lump in my throat would not go away. I knew it wasn’t that I was letting the pregnancy hormones control me. There was definitely a problem. Jo never wanted to spend time with me anymore or he would use sleep as an excuse to avoid me. I didn’t want to resort to looking through his phone, but I was at the breaking point, so I searched it. His coworker’s name and number came up in texts and calls.

During such an emotionally uncertain period in our lives, I knew mistakes were going to be made, but Jo cheating on me was a whole different book I wasn’t sure I was prepared to sit through and read. Unfortunately, I had no choice. I needed answers. I finally confronted him during an appointment with my OB. Obviously, the doctor’s office isn’t a very appropriate place to have that kind of confrontation, but Jo was never around anymore and I felt like this was my only opportunity to find out the truth.

Since his skulking around had become too obvious to deny, Jo finally admitted that he was seeing someone behind my back. He had even gone so far as to put his uniform on when he went out and bring his regular clothes in a bag so I would think he was working when he was really meeting up with her. If anyone had a right to be in a shit state, it was me. I was preparing to have a baby and the father of my child was cheating on me. Finally, I stopped fighting back the tears and let myself break down. I felt duped, cheated, and humiliated. I was completely heartbroken.

My high school graduation day, with Isaac. I graduated early but walked with my class in June.

What was there to say to make things right? Was there anything I could do to make the wrongs better? I felt trapped by Jo’s lies and his feelings for this stranger. His behavior wasn’t all that surprising. He was running from the serious situation we were put in and I was really frightened he would choose this other girl over me and the baby. I still loved him and I had no idea how important this other “relationship” was to him.

Once, he didn’t come home until eight in the morning. It was the morning of my baby shower. I woke up, surprised to not see his usual slumped-over body staring out the window. Was he out running an errand this early after working so late? Peering outside, I saw his car enter the development. He disappeared for a minute, circling the block, and entered the driveway from the opposite direction. Jo’s parents were aware that he hadn’t come home the night before and when he walked in the door we all confronted him. Jo barely seemed to flinch and just shut us out, insisting that nothing had happened.

Did I want to be with someone who was capable of leaving me at such a vulnerable time? The uncertainty about our relationship that had consumed me when I first found out that I was pregnant had become relevant again. But now I worried that, even if I didn’t want to be with Jo, would anyone want to be with
me
once I had a child? But at that point, it was too late to step back and rethink the biggest decision of my life. I was having this baby with or without Jo. Seconds, minutes, days flew by as my due date approached. It felt like I didn’t even have a second to stop and blink.

Chapter 8

The Persistent Push

January 18, 2010

Five a.m. was way too early to be rising; even the sun wasn’t ready to begin a new day. My bladder had woken me up just as Jo was preparing to leave for work. His mom had scored him a job installing copy and fax machines in New Jersey, far away from all the drama associated with his old job. Not only did it put an end to the affair, Jo was now receiving a higher pay and benefits and his hours were earlier and more regular.

It wasn’t unheard of for me to be waking up with Jo due to some pregnancy related issue. Per usual, I was exhausted and just wanted my head to be back on the pillow, but my pajamas and bed were damp so I thought I had peed myself. After cleaning up and changing, I went back to bed, but within a few hours I was woken up again by painful cramping. Pain and discomfort are pretty standard for a woman closing in on her due date, so I didn’t really realize what these cramps meant.

I called my mom to ask if mild cramping was typical. She came over right away, calmly explaining to me that I was in labor and had been for hours. I was in labor? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I thought that my water breaking would be this intense moment, not just a feeling that I had wet myself. This was it? Okay. I went with the flow and followed protocol. I called my doctor. Since my contractions (the cramping I was feeling) were already five minutes apart, he told me to go to the nearest hospital, not the one I was scheduled to give birth at. We arrived at Sacred Heart Hospital at around 10:00 or 11:00 that morning and they confirmed that my water had broken. There was no denying it now, I was definitely in labor.

The boring, painful hours ticked by. I was anxious that something would go wrong, but I tried to relax and focus on the birth instead of worrying about problems over which I had no control. Soon Jo and his family arrived, accompanied by three people from the MTV crew. Even though, instead of the usual giant cameras that had been following me around, they used three handheld Flip cameras, the additional people and cameras made me feel trapped and anxious to deliver the baby.

In my episode of
16 and Pregnant
time was compressed so that the birth seemed like it happened in neat, time-segmented clips. The professionals crave certain angles and go above and beyond the regular, shaky video a family member would have shot, but what you didn’t get to see were the hours of lying around in pain, hoping the delivery would speed up. In the early hours I was anxious, but not complaining yet. Every second, minute, and hour that passed was leading up to the tiny moment in time that I had been waiting so patiently for. What was one hour or two more? Besides the pain and restlessness, I was consumed by a fear that had been on my mind from the moment I had found out I was pregnant.

Throughout my pregnancy I had been worried about the baby’s health. There was nothing to indicate I had any reason to be concerned, but I still had an unsettling feeling that made me question my actions left and right. Every pregnancy myth became fact in my mind and I worried constantly that my baby might not turn out to be okay. I even convinced myself that finding out the sex was bad luck. I was the only girl from my season of
16 and Pregnant
to keep the sex of the baby a surprise. I painted the nursery a neutral color and for the baby shower registry kept everything unisex. I also had a name picked out for each gender.

I don’t think anyone really understood my decision, not even Jo. That age-old question, “Do you want a boy or a girl?” was tiresome to me. I didn’t care. Healthy was the only thing that mattered because I had so much anxiety that I might have a baby with special medical needs. All I wanted was a strong, healthy baby. Now that I was about to give birth, I was faced with finding out if my fears had an ounce of truth to them.

After a day of labor, I had grown sick of ice chips. Although I desperately needed sustenance and water, for the most part I could deal with the pain. It wasn’t excruciating until the contractions started coming nonstop.

At eight centimeters dilated I was begging for an epidural to relieve the pain I had been suffering through. An epidural is an injection of anesthesia into the spine that provides pain relief for the lower half of the body. Originally, I was set on having a natural birth, but by this point the pain had become so unbearable I realized there was no way I could get through the delivery without one.

Finally, my doctor was telling me it was time to start pushing. In front of seven people and three Flip cameras, I began the most physically demanding process of my life.
Push, Kail. Push.
The nurses, the doctor, my mom, and Jo all encouraged me. I hated those words.
Shut up! Shut up!
In the midst of the cramping and pushing an individual out of my body, I demanded absolute silence. Is that too much to ask? Finally, the voices all around me quieted down, but the cameras were still there. They seemed to hover three inches from my makeup-free face the whole time. Up until then, I hadn’t had any serious regrets about having my life documented, but my mood toward that was changing. I wanted to cry.

At 6:15 p.m., Isaac Elliott was born at six pounds and four ounces. Jo cut the cord like a proper father and announced the arrival of our boy. My stomach deflated slightly. I was a mother. Now I cried.

I held Isaac, who was wrapped tightly in a hospital blanket, for an all too brief moment and glimpsed his angel face before the nurses took him away from me. His umbilical cord had been wrapped around him and as a result there was no typical shrill cry. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t really understand why he was being taken from me. I wanted to forever hold that image of his beautiful face in my head. How did I create such a perfect, little human being? The beauty cancelled out all wrongs. The endless fights and many mistakes along the way vanished miraculously the moment I saw my son. I was left to be a clutter of joy, sadness, and exhaustion.