I’m 34 weeks pregnant.
My belly is round, my feet are swollen, and my baby kicks every time I play Stevie Wonder. My husband rubs my back, makes me protein smoothies, and calls our unborn child by name like she’s already here. At night, we fall asleep to the sound of lullabies from an app I downloaded.
This is what love feels like.
What safety feels like.
What being seen feels like.
And I can’t stop thinking about my mother.
She was once pregnant too. Young. Alone. Terrified. Not because her partner wasn’t involved — he was very involved. So involved, in fact, that he beat her while I was inside her. With every bruise, I learned what survival felt like before I even learned to breathe.
But let me back up.
My mother was born in Guyana, South America, into a world that gave her nothing and expected everything. One of nine children. Nine mouths. Nine needs. Nine lives to protect.
But here’s the part that silences a room: each of those children came from different fathers.
And before you judge, before you attach labels to that legacy — understand this: It wasn’t recklessness. It wasn’t immorality. It was survival.
My grandmother lost her first husband when he was shot. Her world went dark — literally and figuratively. They didn’t have electricity. Just oil lamps that flickered like fragile hope in an unforgiving night. With no income, no education, and nine children to raise, she did what women have always done when cornered by poverty: she adapted.
She remarried. Twice. Had children with those men. Some stayed. Some didn’t. But the point wasn’t romance. The point was food. Shelter. A lifeline.
In 1940s and 50s Guyana, there was no sex education, no empowerment workshops, no “Lean In” circles. There were just girls becoming women far too early and mothers far too young. The silence around womanhood was deafening.
So when my mom, at 16 years old, married a man 20 years older, no one gasped. No one called it what it was. They called it a good match.
He had a job. A house. A plan.
She had no idea what she was looking for — maybe a father figure, maybe just someone who’d make her feel less invisible.
And then she got pregnant.
When she tells me the story of her first labor, my heart folds in half.
She didn’t know what labor was.
She didn’t know what sex really was either. Or menstruation.
She was told babies came on a plane.
Later, she believed they cut babies out of your stomach. That was her understanding of childbirth.
So when the contractions came, she expected a scalpel. Expected the doctor to come in with a knife. Instead, she was told to push — and I imagine her face, contorted not just with pain, but with pure confusion.
She was a child giving birth to a child. In a hospital room that probably smelled like bleach and felt like betrayal.
She had more children with that man. And eventually, she left. Not because she suddenly found courage, but because she found a crack in the system — America. The land of opportunity. Or at least the illusion of it.
When she arrived in the States, everything was different.
The streets were paved (mostly). There was hot water. And people looked at her funny when they found out her husband was old enough to be her father.
She also started noticing something else — her friends’ husbands were younger. More playful. More gentle. She started seeing the contrast between what she had and what she might’ve deserved all along.
It didn’t help that her husband was still cheating. Still drinking. Still hurting her.
So when my dad came along, with his charming smile and promises of love, she fell. Hard.
But my dad had his own agenda.
He needed a green card.
And my mother, still aching for love and validation, didn’t see it.
They got married at a courthouse. No cake. No music. Just signatures.
She got pregnant again — this time with me.
And then the beatings resumed. Only now, it was a new man doing the hitting.
She said she gained 15 pounds during her pregnancy with me. Fifteen.
And she started at barely 100 pounds. My mother is barely five feet tall. She was carrying a child while being emotionally and physically tortured.
She said she was scared every day.
And when she tells me this now, in that small voice of hers, I want to scream.
I want to go back in time and wrap her in the love I feel now. I want to tell her, “You are not a mistake magnet. You were just never taught how to be loved.”
And now — here I am.
Thirty-six. Pregnant. Glowing. Loved. Safe.
I’ve had prenatal classes. Books. Community. A partner who massages my back and cries at ultrasound appointments. I know what labor is. I know what love is.
And the contrast? It guts me.
Because it’s not just about time. It’s about education, agency, and healing.
It’s about how mindsets are inherited — and how hard we have to fight to unlearn them.
My mother grew up believing her worth was tied to what she could endure.
I grew up believing my worth is tied to what I will never accept.
She survived so I could thrive.
She took every beating, every betrayal, every lonely night in a foreign country, so I could one day sit here — typing this — with a baby kicking in my belly, and a husband in the kitchen asking if I want pancakes or waffles.
That’s not just progress. That’s a revolution.
So no — my mother didn’t fail.
She cracked open a wall with her bare hands so I could walk through it.
And I will raise my daughter to know everything my mother didn’t:
What love looks like.
What power feels like.
What freedom tastes like.
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Hi, I’m Fiona, a writer going through an unexpected chapter in life.
I lost my job in April 2024, and my husband and I have been getting by on his small medical residency income. After stepping away from IVF, we were surprised and overjoyed to find ourselves pregnant, but it’s added financial stress as we prepare for this new journey.
Writing is my way of contributing to our family while covering essentials like groceries, bills and maybe items for our 🌈 miracle baby.
If you’d like to support us, your kindness would mean the world — every little bit helps. $1, $2…Anything is appreciated. Donate here (Venmo).
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Read also: Our Marriage Ended Before It Began: The Pregnancy That Shattered Everything
Read also: I’m Pregnant And Broke — My Cry For Help
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash
