Yes you read that correctly.

WAIT!

Before you sprint breakneck speed to the comments section hear me out! I know what you’re thinking, you love your children, they are your entire world, the wind beneath your wings, and they give your life meaning. I don’t doubt you sis, and quite frankly I PRAY that you mean that with all sincerity. Your babies deserve a mama who loves them like that. I’m not here to question your feelings towards motherhood or to tell you that you aren’t a great mother. I know some of the folks reading this personally and y’all are truly doing the dang thing! Feel better?

Now, back to my original point, depending on the circumstances in which your children were born my statement holds true… YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE A MOM! This is not for my ladies who had planned pregnancies, those who had happy surprise pregnancies, for my folks who just didn’t use protection effectively, and it isn’t necessarily for my teen moms who received their little blessings early in life.

My own mother was a teen mom and there ain’t one out there better than Cheryl Ann! We can fight if you choose to debate this fact with me; it’s not up for discussion.

This post is for a very specific group of women, a sisterhood I almost allowed myself to be inducted into just 3 short years ago.

INSERT PRAISE BREAK AS I THINK OF HOW THE LORD KEPT ME FROM MY OWN LONELINESS & DESPERATION!

 

This post is for my ladies who intentionally became pregnant because they thought it would make their man love them, choose them, stay true to them, or just plain old be a man. If this is you, beloved I’m telling you, you never wanted to be a mother, not like that anyway. I say this with a heavy heart and a prayer on my lips for you, same prayer I prayed for myself. You didn’t want to be a mother; you wanted to be the woman he loved. You wanted to be enough for him, to be the sole recipient of his loyalty, his love, and his affection. You wanted the same access to his heart that you had given him to yours and somewhere along the way you realized that you weren’t enough. You saw that everything you gave him, everything you did for him didn’t satisfy him. You weren’t meeting his needs and he wasn’t meeting yours, but you still wanted him. You wanted him and you had to figure out a way to KEEP him. You understood that you needed to be more, to give him more, and if you did it right he would give you everything you ever wanted from him.

Then it hit you, LIGHTBULB!

You made up your mind to get pregnant. He would be everything you needed him to be, he would devote himself completely to you if you gave him a child.

HOW SWAY?!

If you proclaim to be a Christian I need you to really hear what I’m about to say to you. God gave us Christ, His only Son, allowed him to be the sacrificial lamb for our sins, permitted that he be beaten, tortured and slain and we don’t always choose God or live the way He calls us to.

I said we, “you are not alone, I am here with you.”

So why do we as women believe if we give a man a child he will choose us?

AGAIN HOW SWAY?!

The reality is that more often than not, he won’t. If you don’t believe me we will talk about the members of my favorite cautionary tale Peter Gunz, Amina Buddafly, & Tara Wallace in just a few seconds. You just sit tight!

Can I share something with you? You shouldn’t have to be a discounted, value package for a man to love you. You alone should be and are enough, MORE THAN ENOUGH! If he didn’t choose you before the baby, he won’t choose you after that child either. Your entire being and essence is a gift, if he can’t recognize all you have to offer without you having to turn yourself into a human version of extreme couponing, HE ISN’T THE ONE! A man should choose you because who you are is so precious to him that not having you in his life is inconceivable. That is the only way it works, when he chooses you for you and not your ability to reproduce! I hate to break it to you sis, but there are plenty of fallopian tubes out there, yours aren’t special. Making a baby is easier than… well basically ANYTHING!

If by some miracle he did choose you after the child, he chose the baby, not you. If you are the woman who likes to believe that your master plan of “Give him a baby” actually worked I dare you to ask him if he chose you or the child, go ahead. I’ll wait.

What did he say? Do you prefer bath tissue or Kleenex? Let it all out…

If this is your story, somewhere along the way you figured out (or will if you haven’t already) that your plan didn’t work. He continued to stay out all night and left you home with a crying baby. He still cheated after he promised you that he loved his family and nothing was more important to him than the life you created together. He still refused to grow up and be a man and you ended up with two babies to take care of instead of just the one legal drinking age baby you had before. An entire pregnancy and a whole child later and nothing changed for the better. You now have more struggles, more stretch marks, more responsibility, a larger waistline, and no better man in sight. You gave him literally everything you had and he still gave you nothing in return. Your solution didn’t work and now not only do you not have the man you were hoping for; you have a child you didn’t really want. So now what?!

NOW, you have to heal, and you have to be a mom. NOW you have to realize just how amazing you are and accept nothing less than what you want and deserve. NOW you have to be okay with being by yourself for a while until the right one shows up. NOW you have to love you like you never loved yourself! And most importantly, you have to love those babies! They are here now and though you may have the scars of heartbreak from their father you can’t take it out on them. They didn’t know how bad Daddy would hurt you and it’s not their fault. If their Dad isn’t around you have to find a way to fill in those gaps. You knew he wouldn’t be there for them, you were hoping he would but deep down you knew better. He showed he wouldn’t be accountable to them when he wasn’t accountable to you. You unmade that bed (or Altima backseat, no judgments) and got pregnant in it, now you have to lie in it. NOW you have to make sure they have everything they need despite what Daddy does or doesn’t do. Because even though you didn’t want to be a mom you are one now, you can’t do to them what their father did to you. You have to break the cycle! You have to show your babies the love you wish he had shown you. You have to be a mom whether he’s a father or not !

To my sisters who are considering going down this well traveled treacherous path, DON’T! It never turns out the way you think it will. Trust me, I almost found out the hard way. The man I almost let impregnate me is no different now than he was years ago. Your love didn’t change him, your best Kama sutra moves didn’t change him, your tears didn’t change him, your ultimatums didn’t change him, and a baby won’t change him either. Your baby should be born out of a place of love and longing, not desperation and frustration. Bearing a child for a man is a labor of love, why put in all that work for someone who won’t work that hard for you?

I am pleading with you, PLEASE don’t take the Tara Wallace approach to love. I know it’s easy to make light of her situation but she isn’t an anomaly. We all know a woman who gave all of herself to a man who gave her nothing in return. Peter Gunz is no different from Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike or whoever your baby daddy of choice is. She gave him children, required nothing of him and he continues to mistreat, belittle, and embarrass her. He married another woman WHILE DATING HER and still comes back to her bed because she lets him. She is proof that you can LITERALLY give a man the fruit of your looms and if he isn’t committed to you it won’t matter.

He isn’t committed to his wife either but that’s another post about being stupid for love for another time, don’t worry it’s coming.

Basically what I’m saying is don’t volunteer as tribute to be a mom for a guy who refuses to be a man to you. Don’t start “doing it for the kids”. Because once you go down that road there is no turning back.