A glimpse at the Beginning

I’ve been with her almost her whole life. I missed the first 7 months but I’ve been with her ever since. I don’t ever want to take the place of her biological mother. I promise you that. But I do have a very close bond with my girl. She had my heart the day I met her when she looked at me with those big, blue, beautiful eyes. I grabbed her before-bed bottle and fed it to her, sitting on the living room floor. I just sat there, holding her in my arms, giving & getting happy smiles. I could feel him looking at me. That was the night, after we tucked her in, that he told me that he loved me. My response? “I think I love you too.” I know, horrible, but he had hurt me badly before and I was scared. And he had a daughter now. It was a whole different ballgame. But despite all my reservations AND my head telling me it all wasn’t a good idea, my heart was telling me to jump in. So I did. With both feet. Which is why she feels like my own. Which is why I love my girl and my husband (hereafter referred to as ‘Big Papa’) more than life itself. Which is why I worry about my girl at school, at the “other house” with a manipulative, controlling mother who expects perfection and fights with her fiancé (Or boyfriend?....more on that in another post) in front of my girl. I worry about her relationships with her friends, the bullies on the playground, her grades, what she will be when she grows up, when she’ll get her heart broken for the first time, and when she will say ‘I love you’ to a boy for the first time….


I’m sure her mother worries about these things for her too. Her mother. The woman who appears to hate me, who likes to pretend I don’t exist and who looks at my husband when responding to a question I ask in an attempt to communicate about our kid during drop off and pick up times. This non-relationship deserves its own post so I’ll stop right here.

This was all on my mind today as I thought about the possibility of my girl sleeping over at a friend’s house during our weekend time. I hesitated. My girl has had a few sleepovers already as she is 7 now and she is at the age where sleepovers are the best ever. Remember that age? I hesitated because it didn’t feel right that somebody else would put my baby to bed. How could they know that my girl likes her back rubbed for at least 4 minutes each night, that we say 2 different prayers and read a story before bed? Even if I told them what to do, it still wouldn’t be right because it wouldn’t be me putting her to bed.

Then I realized I was being silly because someone else puts her to bed 50% of the time. That someone else is her mother who must feel the same way. Do I block this realization out? I must because it hit me hard today. I can’t imagine how hard it is for my girl’s mother to deal with the fact that another woman is in her daughter’s life. And that her daughter loves that other woman. And that this other woman loves her daughter so much it hurts sometimes. But it’s hard for me too. I guess because I’m the ‘wicked stepmother’, I’m not supposed to feel this way….right?