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Apparently this is the week of Will, or the week where you have to hear about my husband way too much. I met him, back in NorCal (or is that Central Cal?) while I was working at the County Hospital. I worked in environmental services (aka cleans the hospital toilets), a job I would not have gotten if it weren't for BFF and her neighbor Susan hooking me up. I was pretty much broke before the job. I had been fired from my job at S~Mart foods, a central California grocery store chain and was currently collecting half unemployment/ half welfare. I was preggo when they fired me. This is a story of how we met. I will apologize ahead of time, because it's long.
(This may a news to mostly everyone reading this. I was pregnant. I was twenty, a single mom and was going to have a kid BEFORE I met Will. Yes that means that Katie is not technically his but there is no doubt in this house who her Daddy is)
Back to the job situation. I was working in the bakery/deli while I was pregnant. I was happy to get that job because I made more that working at that mall photography chain, and after your probation period you got BENEFITS. I don't think I had ever had a job with benefits before, but I wanted some. So 4 days a week I walked or took the bus across town to the grocery store to work. In the deli, I sliced meats and cheeses for people, took orders for party trays, and scooped up nasty salads for customers. You know, those weird kinds of pasta salads that look kind of suspicious. It because they are. We used to just cover them with plastic at night and use them again the next day. Not as fresh as you thought, huh?
The other job I did was setting up those chickens in the rotisserie. I would go to the refrigerator and get the 40 pound boxes of chicken (with my four month pregnant self) already seasoned. There was garlic, lemon herb, and plain. Then I would tie the legs together and stick them on the metal spikes so they could cook slowly over the next four hours. I spent more time in the deli than the bakery. Usually, if I was in the bakery, it was the closing shift. And I didn't like that schedule because I had to work until eleven, and there was no bus home that late. It took me an hour to walk home.
At 14-16 weeks pregnant the doctor does the AFP test. The level helps determine if there is any abnormalities in the fetus, like spina bifida and down syndrome. I had my level drawn and a couple weeks later it came back abnormal. I met with the genetic counselor and they offered me an amniocentesis with a level 2 ultrasound to see if everything was ok. I made an appointment for a week later.
At this point in my pregnancy, being that I was completely alone, I was constantly unsure of how the hell I was going to have another kid all by myself. I only had BFF, who is BFF for the fact that she was always there for me no matter what. My family was out of state, all of them. My ex and I were not exactly on good terms but at least now we had a custody order to stop his power trips. But the moment I heard something might be wrong with my baby, I was freaked out. I felt guilty for not being sure I wanted it (I didn't know of it was girl or boy), for looking into the idea of adoption when I found out I was pregnant. At that moment, I knew I wanted my baby, and I wanted a healthy baby.
At the appointment with the Dr Candy Bar (his name is the name of a...well..you get it) who did the amnio, I was horribly nervous. I laid in the dim lit room, staring at the screen of the ultrasound as they guided the needle in. I couldn't look at the GIANT needle as they put in into my belly because I hate needles (in me, not my patients). They did measurements of the head and organs, like they do with other ultrasounds and told me they'd tell me in about a week. I got
