I threw up on my birthday. I wish I could say that it was from celebrating my pending 22-year-olddom the night before, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Let’s back up three weeks.
It’s Valentine’s Day. The night before, I collapsed on the floor in pain. My legs felt numb, my back was screaming and I imagine I had a fever but being a college student, I didn’t own a thermometer. I slept horribly that night, tossing and turning and alternating between chills and sweating. In my overdramatic mind, I was dying but not dying enough that I thought an ER visit in the middle of the night was necessary. So I sucked it up and waited until morning to go to the immediate care clinic that I was somewhat of a regular at.
“What seems to be the problem today, Halle?” Pronounced like Hailey or Haley or Hailee, not Halle as in Halle Berry which is the correct way. Whatever, I was used to it and it was a minor thing in comparison to what was happening and what was about to happen.
“I think I might have a kidney infection or at least a severe UTI,” I replied.
“Why do you think this?”
Well, first of all, look at me. I’m obviously ill. But this wasn’t my first UTI/kidney infection rodeo. Unfortunately for me, my kidneys and my bladder, I’ve gotten anywhere from two to five UTIs a year since I was 14, but I only had one kidney infection before. I remember how painful it was and I was about there at that moment. Though I am a notorious smartass, I tried to explain as calmly as possible to the nurse what my symptoms were.
“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
“No.”
And that was the beginning of the end.
I’m sure you can guess by this story and the title what ended up happening here. I shuffled my way down the hall to give them the necessary urine sample and then shuffled back to the room to await the results.
The doctor came in after a few minutes and I think I knew then what she was going to say.
“Is this your partner?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you have a severe kidney infection so we will need to do IV antibiotics here before you can leave… and you’re also pregnant.”
Well fuck.
Here I was, lying in an immediate care clinic, 21 years old and just trying to finish college. I couldn’t even take care of myself some days and now there was the impending doom of a human life coming into the world in nine months that I would be responsible for.
My mom was going to be pissed.
I asked the doctor for a bin to throw up into.
There are a million things that go through your mind when this moment comes, especially when you’re unprepared for such a revelation. I immediately thought about how I still had three and a half months left of college, I needed to get a full-time job after, I wanted to move to New York. I felt like I was watching all of that crumble before my eyes. And at the time, I didn’t feel like I was being overdramatic. I was just the right amount of dramatic because I was 21 and pregnant. Better than 16 and pregnant, I guess, but still not the ideal.
My mom was waiting for an update on what the doctor said. I debated whether or not I should tell her.
Fuck it. Better do it now and have her help with the next nine months rather than wait and not know what the hell to do when my body started doing weird shit.
I wish I could say that it went better than expected. It actually went worse. I’m pretty sure we sat in silence on the phone for five minutes. The only sound was her crying, and trust me when I say that they were not tears of joy. I knew her reaction wasn’t going to be good, but I didn’t think it would be that bad.
I understood why she had that reaction. I mean, your 21-year-old calling you and telling you that she’s pregnant isn’t what every mother hopes for. I knew she (sort of) shared my dreams for my life and she knew just as well as I did that those dreams were gone or at least severely altered.
She told me she would call me later and then we hung up.
And then the nurse came in to take out my IV and she said to us, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
So back to my birthday.
At this point, it had been three weeks since we found out that we were expecting a little Halle or a little Nolan. I was holding out for a little Halle but we were still 14 weeks away from finding that out.
To everyone else except my mom and Nolan, I was still the same Halle. But I was far from it.
My birthday was going to be like any other, just a little bit harder because today I had to hide my pregnancy from my grandma, brother and dad. And it didn’t start off well considering I was late to breakfast with my mom, grandma and brother due to morning sickness.
I was about to leave the house, but my stomach had other ideas.
My mom and I also had to hide the fact that I was no longer living at my apartment.
Since the week we found out, Nolan and I had been living together, again, much to the dismay of my mother, but I didn’t see the logic in living in a separate home from the man that I was having a baby with. So I took my dog and my stuff and went to Nolan’s, much to the dismay of my then-best friend.
“I wish we could still run around and be stupid and go to bars like we used to.”
Yeah, I really wanted that, too.
But I sat down at Egg Harbor Cafe and tried to act normal for a few hours, hoping the day would go by fast and my family would leave without finding out.
But, of course, they wanted to go to my apartment and play with my dog. But my apartment wasn’t my apartment and my dog definitely wasn’t there, so we painted pottery instead to pass the time and then we went and tried some teas. Turning 22 was weird.
Eventually, the time came where my mom and grandma left and my brother and I headed up to my school so I could attend my last class of winter term. I just had to make it through the next two hours and then figure out how I was going to get out of drinking a margarita at dinner with my dad when he arrived. He had also suggested getting a drink at the wine bar I worked at after dinner so I had to find something really solid to get me out of this.
Unluckily for me, it ended up being a lot harder than that.
I was sitting in class with severe stomach pain, and I don’t mean the cramps you get at the beginning of pregnancy, I mean severe pain in my stomach that had been persistent for the last hour. I called my doctor somewhat frantic and they told me to go to the ER.
Great. Now I had to figure out how I was going to explain that one to my dad.
So I left class and had my brother drive me to the hospital. I called my dad on the way and rerouted him from the restaurant we were going to. Understandably, he was worried, but he was at least almost to Naperville.
So my brother and I waited in the ER waiting room for Nolan and my dad to arrive. Nolan came first and followed me back to the room. My brother stayed to lead my dad back after he parked. Nolan and I knew that we were going to have to tell my dad and brother what was actually happening. Couldn’t just have the doctor walking in a blurting out that I was six weeks pregnant when half of the people in the room had no idea.
I decided to start with my dad. I sent Nolan and my brother off to find me some water because damn, pregnancy makes you thirsty. His reaction was much better than expected. He was shocked, yes, but also a little excited. He was going to be a grandpa. I told him that I knew that he didn’t expect his first grandchild to come from me — I have an older brother who’s been married for two years now — but this was happening.
And then it was time to tell my brother.
His reaction was my favorite by far. Like me, sometimes, my brother is a person of few words. I knew he wouldn’t give me much, but I was still surprised by the utter lack of speaking he did. He just leaned against the wall, arms crossed, poker face on and nodded slowly. Not a single sound.
We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes.
“Can you please just say something?”
“Congratulations.”
My dad laughed. “Is that an exclamation point, question mark or a period at the end of that sentence?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be.”
Telling my sister was what I had expected it to be. She and my mom drove up to Naperville and we ate at the same breakfast place as the week before. My mom had told me that she thought she was bringing my sister to the slaughter. I guess, in a way, she was right. My sister had no idea what to expect when we trapped her on the inside of the booth.
“I’m pregnant.”
I think her jaw almost hit the table. She and my mom both started crying and I looked around the crowded restaurant to make sure no one was watching the scene that was unfolding here.
My sister was half laughing/half crying and saying nothing, so me, trying to lighten the mood, cracked a semi-joke.
“Would you prefer Aunt Paige or Auntie Paige?”
I didn’t miss the look of distress that quickly passed over my mom’s face when I said that.
At this time, my final spring break ever had rolled around. This meant a week and a half of not having to deal with anyone or hide the facts of my life for a little while. It was refreshing.
But then that time ended and two more months stood between me and graduation.
In early April, I had reached the end of the first nine weeks of pregnancy.
I spent my morning doing homework in the bathroom just in case my nausea caused me to throw up into the waiting toilet. Ironic that it wasn’t my readings for my English class that were causing the churning in my stomach.
Instead, I was nauseous from the growing human inside my body which was now officially a fetus according to an app on my phone. You would think that getting a notification about my baby making it through the first nine weeks of this journey of sorts and now being out of the most critical portion of pregnancy would fill me with elation and relief.
But every day I thought about it, I felt a strange numb feeling, an out-of-body experience if you will.
Now I know that there are plenty of young mothers. You hear about them every day almost. But over the last 15 years, NPR has tracked the average age of first-time mothers as it’s risen. In 2014, the average mom was 26 when she had her first kid. This was the age I was planning on forgoing my birth control and not caring if I got pregnant. I should note that when I thought of this blissfully stupid ideal, I was in the thick of a two-year-long relationship with someone that I thought I would marry after I graduated college.
Despite this, I ended up leaving that person, dating Nolan, and getting pregnant only three to four months later — the timeline is a guess because they can only estimate when I actually conceived this child. Modern science isn’t really that modern sometimes.
So you might be asking yourself about the birth control part. Well, funny story. I went to Charlotte to visit my older brother and sister-in-law (the children my dad thought would produce his first grandchild. Jokes on you, dad). Even though I’d like to consider myself an expert packer, I forgot my little pack of pills that I had religiously taken every morning for the last three and a half years. So I guess, in a way, this is my fault because I was an idiot. But it takes two to tango. And you only have to tango naked once to add another dance partner to the mix.
And that tangoing led me to conceive at the ripe old age of 21, not really the most opportune time considering I was just trying to finish school and all.
My overwhelming feeling was: how the fuck did I get here? And how the fuck am I going to be a mom? I couldn’t even stop my puppy from shitting in the house and now I was going to be wiping up shit for the next two years at least. But maybe longer because I don’t know how the hell potty training works.
And I feel like everywhere I turned, there was a new thing about kids or pregnancy. Everyone in the TV shows I watch were getting pregnant or miscarrying or having a baby. I just opened one day Twitter and the first tweet in my feed was “These 5 Figure Show How Expensive It Is To Have Kids in the US Today.” How reassuring considering at the time I was working a part-time job as a server at a wine bar and Nolan and I were struggling to come up with money for rent and utilities let alone prepare for a baby.
I kept telling myself that it was going to be different when the baby came in October. By then I would have a full-time job and making a salary and feel some sense of security. But this was all a stupid fantasy because how many people actually get a job right out of college? August had come around and I had finished a seasonal position at Nordstrom and had no other job prospects in sight. Any prospects I had died as soon as I walked into an interview and my stomach was on full display.
There were some days that I had every intention of attending class. I will admit that being a student and being almost three months pregnant was not easy. I never thought it would be. The hardest part was that everything was a secret. My professors knew, of course, so they didn’t think I was just faking illnesses to get out of classes, but fellow students had no idea that I was growing a human as we sat side by side during lectures. There were some days that people pissed me off so much that I just wanted to scream “I’M PREGNANT SO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE AND GO BOTHER SOMEONE ELSE.” But I’d rather that the whole school didn’t know about my soon-to-be mother status prior to graduation. I just had to make it two more months and then I’d be getting my diploma and getting the hell out of there.
I had already driven to school and found a parking spot one morning and I was about to get out when the morning sickness hit. Luckily, I had a plastic bag laying in the trash pile that was my car and I promptly vomited into it. And when I was done, I was going to go to class. But then I threw up again. All the while, people were walking by on their way to class and watching me vomit into a tiny bag in the middle of campus. Just fucking great. So I turned around and went home to sleep it off and throw up in peace.
And then one of my professors — a female who has had children, might I add — told me to try to come to class. She must not have had morning sickness as I did. Or hers must have just been confined to the morning hours, unlike mine.
Needless to say, I didn’t go to class.
It was hard to deal with all the changes my body was going through, especially at so quickly a pace. Around April, I had to start holding my jeans together with a rubber band because I couldn’t button them or even zip them all the way. I decided one day that I could definitely squeeze myself into a pre-pregnancy pair of pants, and then I was left sitting in class wanting so badly to unbutton my jeans that I was on the verge of tears.
There were a lot of days that I thought ‘maybe I should just stop trying to hide it.’ But I think my biggest fear was that people would treat me differently, see me differently than they had for the last four years.
So I continued to hide my growing midsection.
It had come to the point where my clothes just weren’t fitting anymore, especially pants. It was time to start the dreaded maternity clothes shopping.
I didn’t even know if I’d be able to fit into the dress I bought for graduation by the time June rolled around, so I had to return it and find something looser to accommodate my potential size a month from that point.
That meant I needed to do what I really didn’t want to do and actually go try on the clothes at the stores. I already felt bad enough about my body so why not make it worse?
I know I shouldn’t have felt bad, but you go from being a 22-year-old with a six pack starting to form to a slightly pudgy-looking girl. It was shitty. My waist was noticeably thicker, but even though it meant the baby was growing, it left me feeling self-conscious. Did people think I was just getting fat or were they going to figure out what was actually happening?
Baggy shirts and layers had become my new best friend, but now that spring had finally come and summer wasn’t far behind, I wouldn’t be able to hide my changing midsection under all those clothes much longer.
And it sucked because I had been waiting around for spring since summer ended the year before. But now that it had arrived, I was wishing for winter again. It was much easier to hide under a bunch of layers than it was to hide under shorts and T-shirts.
I had put on a jumpsuit one day that was loose and comfortable. What I didn’t notice, though, was that it featured my growing belly.
Maybe people would just think I was getting fat?
It’s not like I was the first person to get pregnant young and unmarried or even the first person to get pregnant while in college. I just felt a sort of self-consciousness around others about my situation. I think part of that came from my upbringing. The way life worked was you went to school, got a degree, got a job, got married and THEN had a kid. I went to school, got two degrees, was trying to get a job and was having a child with someone I’d been seeing for less than half a year.
Instead of being excited to tell people, I felt ashamed.
Even after I let the news out publicly in June, I still hoped I wouldn’t see anyone from school because I didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions they would have about my pregnancy. I felt embarrassed.
But it shouldn’t have to be that way. Just because I was young and having a kid didn’t mean I should be seen as any less than others who plan for this moment. Some people my age and younger would choose not to have it, but I chose to forgo some of my own dreams to raise this kid. And I had no reservations about that.
Yet everyone just kept telling me how hard it was all going to be instead of telling me that it was going to be one of the greatest joys of my life. Yes, I was scared shitless to have a kid. Again, I was only 22. Some days I can barely take care of myself, so having a kid seemed daunting, to say the least.
I will say that having a baby has been, surprisingly, one of the best things to ever happen to me. My son was born on October 28, 2018, and I have loved every moment since then. Yes, I don’t sleep as much as I used to or have a full-time job or do really anything that a normal 22-year-old does, but I’ve taken on what I view as the most important job for me right now.
It has been a challenge to figure all of this out when I was very unprepared, but I think we’ve done pretty well so far. I mean, I’ve only been peed on a couple of times in the last few months so I guess that’s a win?
1 Comment
You’re so brave! I’m sure your a wonderful mother, I miss you, and I hope I get to meet him some day!