Leaving the hospital with empty arms.

Leaving the hospital was hard. I mean really hard. I just kept holding her and wishing I could ingrain my thoughts into her tiny head. I was so afraid she would hate me when she grew older because of who I chose to be her parents. You see even in this I was somewhat talked into as well. 

My mom showed up to take me home and had my little sister with her. She had fallen down on the playground and scraped her face up. I was so angry inside (but definitely didn't show it)  because this was an intimate moment and the less people around the better and I especially didn't want my sister there, we had never had a sisterly relationship. This day was being treated as though I had been away and was being picked up to go home. There were some last photos taken but it was more like there was this novelty we were recording. There was even a photo with my daughter and sister with her scraped up face! It seems as though there was no gravity given to what that day really meant.

As I walked her bassinet over to the nursery, the nurse who had been helping me that morning was sitting at the back desk. She looked up at me & had tears in her eyes. I couldn't take another step. I pushed the bassinet towards her & turned crying, rushing back to my room where my Mother and sister were waiting for me.

The rest of that day is a blur. I remember my step-dad coming home and that’s about it.

The next evening, the pastor from our church and his wife stopped by. It was a church tradition for them to stop by and visit at the hospital anytime a new baby was born. Not so for me. I was tainted. I was a second class citizen who would be LUCKY if I could find a decent husband now.

The social worker at the hospital had taken a few Polaroid’s for me, because she knew it might take a while for us to get the photo’s developed that we had taken (this actually was excellent foresight on her part because I carried that around with me for weeks until I did get actual photos back). After my parents & I visited with the pastor and his wife for a while, I brought out one of the Polaroid’s to show them. As the wife gazed at the photo, I began crying again. She put her arm around me & said “I know hun. Some lessons are harder to learn than others”. I stopped crying instantly. This went way past the lesson part. I learned my “lesson” when I found out I was pregnant at 17, no husband, no support, and had to figure out what I was going to do! This was not about lessons anymore. In a way this sent me the beginning of the message ---no one wants to hear about it. As soon as she said those words I stopped crying immediately. Some of the things that were said to me still amaze me to this day.