We all can’t wait to grow up when we’re young. The world is filled with all this possibility and wonder. I’ve been told ever since I was little that the world is my oyster; in other words, the world was completely opened to me and I could be anything put my mind to. So I just couldn’t wait to grow up. Being an adult seemed awesome and I wanted to skip over the kid stage and get to my life, start living and taking care of myself. I thought | knew it all and I was ready to prove it. I had this idea, this grand picture that I had painted in my mind of life and how it should turn out.
I thought I knew it all, until the day that suddenly | didn’t. They tell you to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. Life decided it was time to teach me a very hard and valuable lesson…. what it meant to actually grow up. I was just 17 years-old, a junior in high school, the day I found out I was going to become a mother. Before that day, I was carefree and fearless. Thinking my life was going to work out because I had a plan. I was a normal teenager with lots of friends. We loved to go out and have fun. We were young and just wanted to “live” life; at least, that’s how we saw what we were doing.
When in reality I kept putting myself into situations | should have never put myself in. I was irresponsible and never worried about the consequences of my actions. I was given a scholarship for college, and all I had to do was keep a C average; I didn’t care about school enough, however, and with my lack of ambition I lost that opportunity. I was heading down the wrong path and I was so wrapped up into drinking and experimenting with different types of drugs, or (“living’) that I couldn’t see what I was really doing, which was self-destruction. Then the day came when life hit the brakes and changed everything.
I will never forget how scared I was in that instant when two lines instead of one popped up on the pregnancy test. It felt like life had slammed on the brakes and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt and I was being thrown into something that I had never seen as being possible because when I was 12 I was told that kids may not happen. I had hoped in my life plan if I could have kids it wouldn’t be till my 30’s. Now there I was 17 and pregnant. The father? Let’s just say he’s not winning a father of the year award anytime soon. He was 19 and had pretty much the same outlook on life as I did.
He had his own life plan, a plan that just like mine had completely changed in an instant. He was just not as mentally equipped to handle the situation as I had learned that I had to be. We both had our own choice to make, two different but very huge decisions. He decided that he couldn’t be a father. A decision that at the time I hated him for. I felt he had abandoned his responsibilities to me. Obligations that I had decided for him he should be present for. How could you hold your child once at two weeks old and then leave and never look back?
I would obsess over the fact that one day I would have to tell my child about their real father and the decision he had made to leave. I would obsess over how hearing this information would make them feel. Would they feel unloved, unwanted? Would they blame me for his disappearance in their life, or most importantly would they blame themselves? What if they decided that they wanted to meet him, and after all these years and all this work doing it by myself he decided he wanted back into their life? It was so hard not to have my mind filled with so many questions.
People would always say to me just to lie to or never mention him to my kid. As a parent, I wanted to do what was best for my child, but I also wanted to do what was right by them and as tempting as it could be to erase him altogether, how could I? In all the lessons life has taught me, one of the biggest is that the truth will always come out. It isn’t my decision to make their own minds up on what they should or shouldn’t know about themselves. As hard as it would be to do one day this conversation will happen. He will have to look my child in the eyes and answer for all the time he missed.
Explain to them why he made the decision he made. All I can do is stand back and hope: hope that as a mother ill teach my child that no matter what it was never there fault, that they are so loved and wanted that whatever that man says doesn’t change their worth. I can only hope that as a mother I can prepare my child to have a strong enough mind to not only be able to handle this situation but anything life could throw at them. I can only hope. Not everything about my pregnancy was dramatic and terrible. The being pregnant part was actually really awesome.
I was hungry all the time and got to eat pretty much anything and everything to my hearts content. I was always sleepy but best of all never did I get nauseous, which oh my gosh I was so happy for! You get to go to the doctor ALOT and the list of the things you can do is a short story compared to the novel that is the list of things you cant do. The very first feelings you feel of the baby moving feels like you have butterflies in your stomach and getting to hear the heart beat, now that is one of the best sounds in the world. I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting like it was the bible.
It tells you everything about the baby, their progress, what they look like at each stage and I was obsessed with it. At about five months that’s when you get to find out the sex. That was the day I couldn’t wait for. I wanted a girl so bad! I tried hard not to get my hopes up. Don’t get me wrong I would love my child either way, but ever since that first day, that second line I couldn’t stop thinking the word girl, girl, GIRL! I knew it, even though I told myself I didn’t. My heart sank at first when the ultra sound nurse said “Do you see these three dots? I instantly thought “okay cool its a boy, good thing I still have time to pick out a name” but as the nurse went on she said “congratulations your having a girl. ” My mom who was with me just exploded into pure excitement, she had her three grandsons now the first granddaughter, and me, well I felt like I won the lottery. Picking out a name was also pretty easy seeing as how I already picked it out when I was 15, Riley, after my grandfather. I never got to meet him but I’ve always heard what an amazing person he was and I was in love with his name, but | had to make it its own so I decided to spell it Rylee.
After that its pretty much 4 long fat months of you putting baby furniture together, buying clothes, creating a birthing plan and even more going to the doctor. When the day finally came to give birth it was actually not as bad as I had heard or thought. At 5am on November 30, 2010 just two days before my due date. The contractions started, 7 minutes apart now and they definitely hurt. I’m waking up my mom, getting ready to go. In the car my mother says “Your contractions have to be 5 minutes apart for them to take you into the hospital, we have time to stop by the gas station and get some coffee, its going to be a long day.
So there I am standing at the drink machine pouring a drink and having contractions while my mom gets her morning coffee. Finally we arrive at the hospital, contractions still 7 minutes apart. I was put in triage for observation because like my mother said they wont take me till they are 5 minutes apart. In an hourl became 2cm dilated, I’ve gotta make it to 10 and contractions were 6minuts apart. Its time Rylee is coming today. I managed to hold off on the epidural till I reached 6cm, which happened pretty fast. Once I received the epidural everything slowed down and the last 4cm took all day.
Come 6pm I’m dilated to 10cm and its time to push. Doctor:”Okay Ashley, I want you to push really hard for me…. okay stop ! Alright now give me another big push…. stop! Okay Ashley this is it, push as hard as you can. ” All I see is this small thing laying in a U shape on the table. Then I see my doctor and the nurses quickly cut the cord and run Rylee out of the room to another smaller room that’s connected to mine. The doctor comes back and explains to me that she had a neonatal aspiration of meconium. Meconium is the first stool of an infant, composed of materials ingested during the time the infant spends in the uterus.
Neonatal aspiration of meconium occurs when meconium is present in their lungs during or before delivery. The inhaled meconium can partially or completely block the baby’s airways. The nurses had to rush her off to quickly clean out the airway before any major problems could arise. They also let me know that she came out in a U shape from dislocating her her hip during delivery, luckily baby’s at birth are very flexible and her hip went back into place without any long term effects. Finally after we were both cleaned up and checked out I was handed this 6lbs 11oz 21 in long beautiful baby girl.
She was so little and the most adorable thing. At the time it was still hard to wrap my head around the fact that I was now a mother, that she was actually here. I didn’t feel that connection with her at first, and I wouldn’t for some time, but I had to let go of being a teenager and I wasn’t ready to. I had turned 18 just two months before Rylee was born, I was now an adult. Life had given me what I thought I wanted and then some and even though I wasn’t prepared at all it was time to sink or swim. I was always told that life works in mysterious ways.
This phrase never made any sense to me until Rylee. One moment I’m just a teenager trying to figure out life like everyone else and kinda stumbling through it and now I’m an adult with a new born stumbling even more and no idea what I’m doing. At the time when all this was happening I thought life couldn’t get any worse, heck I thought my life was over. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, no silver lining. There was nothing, it was all dark. Now Rylee is five years old and I cant even fathom what life would have been like had she not been in it. She saved me from myself.
She made me open my eyes to life, to really see it. I feel a love that no one else could have given me, a connection | couldn’t have had with anyone but her, my daughter. She was something I didn’t even know I was missing. She makes me wanna be a stronger, better person. To make the world a better place. It was hard, and it still is but I’ve learned that its suppose to be because its worth it. Life’s funny that way. You spend all this time thinking you want one thing and then life kicks down the door grabs you and throws you into complete madness, only for you to make it out more sane.
