L's Birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday. It is also the day that the decision was made to allow millions of unborn children to be killed in the womb.

My husband and I (at that time A was just my boyfriend) found out I was pregnant a few weeks after we graduated from college. I was actually pregnant when we graduated, I just didn't know it yet. We had both just moved to DC. I was a swim teacher and was starting an internship with plans to return to my home state of California for an excellent job I had secured for the beginning of the school year. A was also interning for the summer, while working at a coffee shop. He was ready to begin a masters program in DC in the Fall.

We were planning on getting married, but our breach of our own morals in the chastity department proved quite confusing in fully committing to each other. Finding out I was pregnant we put these plans on hold. Now the most important thing was figuring out what we needed to do for this baby. That summer was one of the most stressful, and also beautiful of my life. We had some very difficult conversations in the first weeks of finding out. We quickly realized that in order to figure out how to best care for our child, we needed to figure out if we wanted to be together or not. Although we both thought we wanted to be married, the pregnancy had shaken both of us. So we made a deal. If we weren't going to stay together, we would give our little baby up for adoption. We were both adamant that we wanted to make sure this baby had a responsible mother and father who loved the child and each other. At that point we weren't completely positive we could be that. After making that decision, we felt we had adequate time to discern our own relationship, and see if we could be those parents we wanted for our baby.

After those first few weeks, and dealing with the discouraging reactions from our family, the summer became a stressful and romantic time for us. We had no money, but we knew that despite everything we were still in love, still wanted to be together, and wanted to raise our child together. We learned to rely on each other completely being in a new city thousands of miles away from our families. We had our first ultrasound at 14 weeks and both cried seeing our little babe for the first time. Slowly things began to fall into place. God seemed to be watching over us as jobs came through in the nick of time. Slowly our panicked talks of adoption faded away, and we started instead planning how to take care of our little family. In September when I was almost five months pregnant, A proposed to me. We squealed and celebrated, and started planning our wedding.

L was born 8 days before her due date, on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, January 22nd. The irony was not lost on us, since in many ways we were great candidates for abortion. We weren't in the most dire of situations, but we were both fresh graduates, with lots of potential and job possibilities now burdened with the responsibility of raising a child together. We were extremely poor. But seeing our little newborn daughter together made those objections to her birth seem completely silly. We were going to figure it out!

Today L turns two, and she is a joyful, spirited little elf-girl. She is constantly amazing us with her quick mind, and nimble feet. She is constantly helping us working out our purgatory time with her tantrums and sometimes crazy sleep :) We cannot imagine our lives without her. Have our lives been harder because we had a baby long before we planned or the world says is acceptable? Probably. But our lives have also been full of learning and joy and happy tears thanks to this tiny, improbable blessing.

-November