It turns out that all that weight gain was caused by Toxemia, something my OBGYN failed greatly to catch. The water I retained swelled around my heart and the stress of the surgery caused me to suffer. I'm sure you can picture it. After awakening hours later unaware of what was going on or where my baby was, they finally snuck Anthony in to see me. They hadn't even told him what had happened to me because we weren't married. Ridiculous! He spent the night alone with his son, and luckily had a lot of help from the nurses. After a week of observation and fear, they finally sent me home. My family of course did their duty for the first bit to help out as I recovered from the C-Section, but the enthusiasm that was presented quickly faded and we were once again, on our own.
Well now I am a mother, and a pretty damn good one at that. I'm also a wife. Anthony married me two months after our son was born. I was 19 years old. He made me the happiest girl in the world and I no longer fantasized about going to the bar. I had more important things to do. We still suffered with peoples' narrow minded comments. Elderly people would comment that we were children having children. When in fact, they were probably no older than I am when they had their children or married their first husbands either. Not that I'm judging. We also dealt with both our families second guessing everything we did. Anthony's parents came down to meet our son and for the wedding, but didn't get a chance to see him much more than at Christmas time when we flew to see them.
Fighting peoples' fears, thoughts, and negativity was a struggle. More for me than for my husband. I know I look young, and I know that I am young. I am now 23 years old, and I'm pregnant with my second son. I get more dirty looks as a young pregnant mom with a toddler than I did when I had an infant son to carry around. People make their comments about how I'm too young to have a son that old or I won't even get served in the beer store when buying beer for my husband after a long week at work. It makes me angry that people simply assume that I live with my parents and they raise my children when the opposite is true.
I moved far away from my family and we rejoined Anthony's in Kitchener, Ontario. My husband works as a CNC laser operator here with his college education backing him up. I currently stay home with my son, and provide child care for other moms in my neighborhood. Because believe it or not, young or not, I am pretty darn good at what I do.
So, next time you see a young mother pushing her stroller or walking with her husband with a toddler between them, perhaps you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that they were careless, or can't afford to feed it. Perhaps you should just thank God that there are some parents out there who love their children and care for them, despite all the bad in the world.
I'm not going to say that the stereotype isn't out there. There are careless people out there, who do have children and don't care for them or attempt to raise them in a healthy, happy or safe atmosphere. But, I will say that just because someone is young, doesn't mean they can't do what they set out to do. So, I pose the question to you now, how young is to young?
