Don't be scared.
Be brave. Be strong. Despite how young and how lonely.
Your body will change to accommodate the small life growing in the snugness of your womb. Growing into the beautiful daughter, the comically smaller version of yourself that you are yet to meet.
There will be times when you will feel less than desirable, because your husband will sit at the dining table and make a snide remark about the way your confident walk had transitioned into a slow waddle to relieve the breaking of your back. He'll upturn his nose at your rotund stomach, and complain that your body will give out to the 'ugly' stretches engraved into your abdomen and thighs.
You'll spend hours in the comfort of your quarters, examining your changing body and cupping your stomach softly. Whispering sweet nothings to an unborn child that you swore could hear the sound of your voice. Dark hair wound up in braids and plopped on the top of your head, exposing your clammy neck as you tut at your invisible ankles and exhausted eyes.
You'll curse those who told you about the 'glow' that would rise in your face during the whole stretch of nine months. But you feel less than beautiful, draped in shapeless clothes and dawdling under the disapproving gaze belonging to your husband.
You'll feel alone. You'll be alone. You'll whisper to the mound of your stomach long into the early hours of the morn, laying in the dark and protectively wrapping your arms around your middle. A sleeping husband turned away from you as you stare at the opposite wall, forced into an awkwardly uncomfortable position. Just like your child, you'll become increasingly aware of your steady heartbeat. Later questioning the babe's sex and eventually their name. You'll laugh at some under your breath and groan at others.
Your husband has an opinion on the matter, despite his disapproval of your situation. He was less than inclined to discover you were with child in the first place, but the alternate option to pregnancy carried much more unsafe, dire consequences. And he was a man who would not lose you. You were everything to him, everything he could exercise his control upon and he would not be the man who lost his wife in the process of eliminating his unborn child.
There will be days spent with just yourself, when your husband is out working the trade and you're sitting on the porch, rocking in the summer heat and fanning yourself with your hand. Taken aback by the sudden kick, the indication that something was certainly moving inside you. Covering your mouth and giggling as you beg for more kicking, just for the reassurance that you still had purpose.
I can tell you now that it will hurt. An excruciatingly long process of pushing and breathing, calling out to greater powers and asking to be spared of the countless waves of pain. Wriggling in a low lit room, shouting to a husband that did not respond from behind the bedroom door. Clutching yourself and gritting your teeth, doused in sweat and tightly squeezing the sheets of your bed.
But all of that will eventually cease to allow the sweet sound of newborn cries to calm the chaos, to put an end to your yells and seethes of pain. To ensure that your husband burst into the room after the cord had been cut, his icy eyes wide and alarmed, only to soften for the first time in months at the sight of the cooing little girl swept in your arms, hidden in a cosy cocoon of blanket. Gazing into the green eyes of your legacy, you'll smile. Because she is so beautiful. More beautiful that you could have possibly anticipated. And that niggling feeling of fear at the back of your mind will dissipate.
Enabling that you were ready for the introduction of motherhood.
