Sometimes It's a B*tch

Positive

"Daaad! Can you help me with my homework?!" Our sixteen year old shouts. I hear muffled voices outside the door as I sit and think. After we lost our daughter, I didn't want to have another baby. The pain was too raw, even now, a year on. She should have been here, crawling around and chasing after her older siblings.

But she's not. I went into labour at twenty-five weeks with Amelia. She was born, absolutely tiny, she barely even weighed a pound; but she was so strong. She fought hard and she lived for two weeks before her tiny body couldn't take it anymore. I was so madly in love with her, I was heartbroken that god had chosen to take her away from me. But I got through it, knowing that she was in a better place now.

Time went on, I never got over it but it did eventually get easier. Joe and I fell to pieces, we got a divorce and we tried to move on with our separate lives, but somehow we always managed to find a way back to one another.

First it was just sex. We both needed a release, and who better to find that release with than someone who knows your body so well already, someone who won't judge you. The sex eventually turned into more. He had changed, he was the same man I fell in love with when I was nineteen. The same man that, even though he didn't have to, stayed to help me raise my three year old son— someone else's child— because he knew he needed a father.

Eventually he moved back in, and now here we are... this same place again. I'm sat here in the bathroom, holding the little white stick that decides my fate.

"Mom are you nearly done in there?" Eric shouts and I flush the toilet. "Yes baby, just a second."

I head towards the mirror and look at myself, I look so tired and frail. All I've been doing lately is throwing up, I can't keep a single thing down. That's what drew me to the tests.

I tap my nails impatiently against the granite worktop and sigh heavily as the pink plus appears. "Shit shit shit" I mumble to myself. It's not that I don't want a baby, of course I do. But Joe and I, we're still working on us. I'm afraid of what will happen if we throw a baby into the works. Our lives already seem like a mess as it is.

I dispose of the test and leave the bathroom. Eric is standing impatiently against the door with his phone in his hand. "There is another bathroom upstairs, you know" I say to him and he pushes past me. "Too far away" he mumbles and I chuckle to myself as I head towards the kitchen.

Our twins, Lillian and Lucas are sat in their high chairs eating scrambled eggs and toast. "Mama this yum!" Lillian shouts and I smile as I walk towards her. Lucas is too busy stuffing food into his mouth to speak to me.

"Are you enjoying that, little man?" I laugh and he nods his head. Joe sneaks up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my neck. "You smell good" he says and I blush.

"Thank you. You don't smell— that bad" I giggle and he smirks. He spins me around to face him and leans in for a long, passionate kiss. These damn pregnancy hormones are getting to me and I feel weak at the knees. He steadies me as he pulls away, my breathing erratic.

"Jeez woman, you get that excited over a kiss?" He chuckles. "Maybe I should kiss you more often" he says as he squeezes my ass.

"Yeah, let's not do that" Eric says as he walks back into the kitchen. I blush again, smiling at my dark haired boy. He has gorgeous brown eyes like myself, and a mop of practically jet black hair.

I was young and madly in love when Eric was born. I was positive his father was the love of my life. I alienated myself from my parents and moved in with him, fell pregnant and then ended up alone and heartbroken. I was ashamed, having to go back to my mom and dad, knocked up and with nothing. I was embarrassed. I had to sit there and listen to the I told you so's and the it served you right's.

But once Eric was born, once I held him in my arms and looked into those gorgeous dark eyes, nothing else mattered. I was going to do everything I possibly could to give him the best life.

And I was doing okay on my own, until I met Joe. He was ten years my senior, but that didn't bother me. I fell in love with the way he loved my son. The way he cared for him like he was his own. Everything he did for us, he did with Eric in mind. We tried time and time again to have children of our own, but nothing.

I ended up getting several rounds of fertility treatments, and then bam, the twins came along. And that was it, I was happy and content. They were all I needed. But I few drunken fights and disagreements lead to several more pregnancies. Each time, I would miscarry. It would break my heart all over again.

And that is why I am so scared. I want this baby, I really do. I'm scared that something will go wrong and it will ruin the relationship Joe and I have worked so hard to fix. Losing Amelia was hard, holding her in my arms and knowing that it could be the last time I did that, it was devastating. I don't want to have to go through that again.

"Babe? Are you alright?" Joe asks and I smile. I realise I've been staring into space whilst doing my internal monologue for a little while now, and I probably look like someone who is off their meds right now.

"Yeah, totally fine. Can I talk to you?" I ask and he nods. "Eric, watch your brother and sister" I tell him and he salutes. Lucas throws food at him and I sigh as we leave the room.

I lead Joe out into the study, the furthest room away from the kitchen. I sit down on the leather couch and stare into his worried eyes. The last time we had a "talk" like this was when I told him I had cancer.

A double mastectomy later, and I'm in the all clear. Shit really does have a tendency to happen to me. When it rains, it pours. It wasn't the most pleasant thing, losing a baby and then finding out I had cancer. I lost my daughter, and then both of my breasts within a few months of each other. Things have been hard, and all I can do is hope and pray that it will get better from this moment on.

"Stevie, speak to me. What's going on?" He asks nervously and I take his hand, pulling him down to the sofa so he's my level. Him towering over me is only making me more nervous.

"Joe, I'm pregnant..."