Being pregnant and single are two very hard things to handle. Twice the saving of money, and twice the work. My daughter's father, in this nine-month time frame, was not the man I thought he would be. The person who told me that he would be there wasn’t. I tried to keep him up to date the best way I could with out yelling at him. I was hurt nearly the entire time he was ‘trying to be there’. All he was doing was making it worse.

Granted the first two months of my pregnancy had gone fine. It was only afterwards that things started to get sticky. Shocked wasn’t the word for how I felt when I found out I was pregnant. I was at the OB-GYN to determine if I had cancer of the lower parts, so a positive pregnancy test was the least of my worries. When I became pregnant I had no idea that my daughter’s father and I would be separated by the time I was two months along.

Of course, at the time, I was planning our quick wedding not having the slightest clue what love was. So as I was sending invitations out to family and friends to announce our bundle of joy, shot-gun wedding, all he was doing was complaining about getting a joint checking account. I decided on that day that I wasn’t going to marry someone who wasn’t going to completely trust me. After calling the wedding off, things got rocky within that relationship. Needless to say, my hormones took over. There was a lot of he-said, she-said and it eventually lead to a conversation along the lines of, ‘I’m really stressed out, it’s not good for the baby. Let’s just be friends’. And as you can guess, that left me stranded at my two-month ultrasound with no ‘father-figure’ for my unborn bambino.

The next months flew by relatively fast. I got to the five-month ultrasound ecstatic on whether this bambino was going to be a girl, or a boy. I was so excited - I don’t even know why. I was like a child waiting for Christmas morning to come. The only thing that was missing was her father. He continued to be missing out on bonding with his child while she was still growing in my stomach for months.

Eventually, my daughter was born on a Saturday morning in March of 2015 at 06:24am. The majority of my labor is still fuzzy; all I know is that I gave birth to her all naturally. I got to the hospital at 03:00am. I seriously thought I was in false labor and they were just going to have to send me home. I was obviously wrong, because I had a child that day. I ask myself the question every day, why would someone not want to be a part of something so beautiful? Her father was late to her arrival into this world as well. He didn’t arrive until after 7 o'clock that morning, then he was upset that I didn’t want him in the room I was in right off. I was like, excuse me I am trying to breastfeed for the first time… which by the way did not work out for me…. I wish it had worked out. But let’s not get on the whole spool of breast is best.

By the time he had actually entered the room, our daughter was a whole hour old. She was cuddling with me skin to skin. That feeling is like no other feeling. The day our daughter was born was the best day of my life. Her father didn’t want anything to do with signing her birth certificate that day, so we agreed he would come back the next day with his parents. But what hurts is that he never showed up again, at least not for three months. His parents never met their granddaughter the day she was born -they actually took much longer to meet her.

Around June 2015, her father graced us with his presence for the first time since her birth. My daughter didn’t know what to think of him, and quite frankly still doesn’t - a year later. This is only because the state got involved.

Around the same time in June, I met this wonderful man who I had no idea would become such an important person to my daughter at the time. He has a kind spirit, gentle smile, and very fierce eyes. This man turned into my daughter's father figure when her father decided he wasn’t going to be around for her last year. Her father now sees her for two hours every Sunday which is court mandated because he took me to court so he could ‘see L alone’. As you can imagine, I wasn’t going to have unsupervised visitation for someone so absent from her life. His actions made no sense.

He went out and got a fancy lawyer to take me to court, but then as soon as I got the best of the best to represent myself and my daughter, he fired his lawyer. So to me, he only wanted to cause us pain and discontent. My lawyer made the court process much better and easier to understand verses where I was before in a whole world of confusion. So with my lawyer by my side, the court process went smoothly and fast.

I just want you to know if you’re dealing with this type of situation, it’s possible to make things better. It just takes time. Strength and happiness is all you need to achieve better in this world. My daughter is 15 months old now. She’s constantly growing and succeeding in life, and I absolutely love seeing her achieve these life goals. She's my pride and joy. I hope someday someone else will view her character the same way that I do.