I’ve spent the past few days in awe of him. I knew I would love him in any form, but he’s breathtaking in every way. I don’t know which one of us cries more. I’m just in awe that I’m actually a mom.
I’d like to share a little about our journey here. (A lot.) I lost a baby in my early 20s, before I had even started dating my ex-husband. It had been from a fling with a friend, and the both of us mourned even though we had no idea what we even would have done as parents. Still, it was moving. Soon after, he went on to have twins of his own, and I had started dating my ex. I would go over and visit, watch his children grow up. Part of me would think about if ours would have looked as much like him as they did. I’d say it out loud, too. It never made him uncomfortable. The experience was something we both felt moved by, and bonded from. He told me he knew I’d be a great mother someday, and I brushed it off thinking it wasn’t something to think about anytime soon. We still keep in touch. My ex wasn’t comfortable talking about my miscarriage. At the time, I just assumed it made sense; it’s a miscarriage, no one wants to talk about a miscarriage, and it was by another man, of course he didn’t want to think about it. My habit of making up excuses for him became a running theme in our relationship, even when we had a pregnancy scare of our own that he responded to by breaking up with me out of panic and hiding out in his mom’s house so she could scold me for saying I wasn’t considering an abortion; He was only 18, I was ruining his life, maybe I’m at an age where I just want a baby but I shouldn’t be dragging him down with it. If I was insisting on keeping it, maybe he didn’t need to be in the picture, especially since we split. How I went on to marry him is beyond me. This scare did turn out out to be just a scare, we somehow managed to get back together, and I had started to realize how important the idea of parenthood was to me. But he didn’t want to talk about it — we’re too young, he’s too young, he has so much he still wants to do, he just can’t imagine a commitment like having kids at his age. His age was something used against me a lot, even though I was only 3 years older than him. It might look like I’m bogging down this first picture of my first kid with a sob story about my past, but it’s more than that. It’s the years I spent having to convince myself that motherhood wasn’t all that important to me, that I could keep putting it off until my boyfriend was ready to talk about it. Then, we got married, and I still had to put it off until my *husband was ready to talk about it. He was never ready. One day at random, he told me he was, and that we should try. And boy, did we. Nothing came of it. He heavily implied that I might just be infertile, that that’s why I couldn’t maintain a pregnancy in the first place. This festered inside me, reopened wounds I had tried to heal years ago. I don’t know why he didn’t think I’d see an OBGYN to find out for myself, but he didn’t seem too happy when I came back with a clean bill of reproductive health. He was downright furious when I found the receipt in his dresser drawer about a vasectomy he’d gotten in secret months ago. I was more furious, though, because I left him. All of the red flags I had ignored for years finally started to surface when I moved out on my own to New York. I really had spent over three years of my life with someone who gaslit me with my own traumas into believing that I couldn’t have kids, just because he didn’t want kids, and he didn’t want me to break up with him for someone who did. As much as I hated the way our marriage of less than a year looked on paper, I was happy to have my last name back. And I was ready to let myself accept that...I just wanted a baby, man. My idea at that point was to look into sperm banks once I had settled into my apartment. Little did I know I was now living across the hall from a very willing donor. That probably sounds cheeky, but he actually said, himself, that if I was just looking to have a baby of my own he was more than happy to contribute. All this within the same week I moved in. I don’t think I took him seriously, at least not right away. I did like spending time with him, though. Maybe I was trying to feel out what genes I’d be dealing with here. Maybe I just liked him. He brought the idea up to me again when his siblings were all gearing up to have kids of their own, that if I wanted we could get in on the “pact”. I thought it was absurdly hilarious. But, I mean...here we are. The thing I think that sold me the most on having a baby with Dallon was the enormous amount of love and support that came from the Gallagher clan. For a while we weren’t sure how involved he would be in my (our) baby’s life, if I should put his name on the birth certificate, if he’d be doing more than visiting. We’ve spent the past 9 months falling in love with the idea of having a baby together, and maybe even a little bit with each other. It felt right when we decided he should be involved. It wasn’t the plan I had moved here with, but sometimes plans don’t work the way you think they will. Clearly. I’m overwhelmed knowing what a big family I’ve brought my son into, how many people are already ready to love him unconditionally. I come from a small family, myself. I’d grown up an only child, only meeting my brother when we were already adults. He loves his nephew so much that it could challenge just about anyone’s, and I’d never diminish how important it is to me that he’s stoked on being an uncle. But even he agrees that it’s kind of amazing that my kid gets to grow up with a seemingly endless expanse of aunts, uncles, cousins, and playmates. It’s something neither of us got. It’s something we’re only starting to get used to now. But we’re grateful for how much their family accepts us, and especially for how much they all adore my son, and that he gets to grow up with that network built into his life. Dallon might as well live with me from how much he stays over these days. He’s been doing so before our kid was even born. He says my place is just cooler. I say we just know we’re bonded for life, and we’re maybe letting something bloom from that. He’s always fun to be around so he’s been great to co-parent with. Never in a million years would I have pictured my perfect baby situation being with a stranger who happened to live in my new apartment building. But here we are.
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