Chapter 5: A Time of Joy and Sorrow

July 17
I am official in my second trimester now and am three months pregnant. I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat again at the doctor’s office. It sounded very fast and strong. The doctor says that the baby seems to be doing well and that I am doing okay but he does have a few concerns. The doctor is concerned by the lack of weight gain so far. Since my first appointment with him I have lost five pounds and was slightly underweight to begin with. My doctor wants me to gain at least two pounds before the next visit. My latest urine sample came back abnormal again so the doctor took more blood. My blood sugar levels also are slightly concerning him and I will have to come in for weekly lab tests and I will be required to test at home. He thinks that I might have gestational diabetes but it normally does not show up this soon. That could cause harm to the baby and me if I am not careful. I have been very careful about what I have been eating but have had problems with my appetite. I just have not seemed to be hungry lately. The doctor gave me a list of things to eat that should help with the weight gain.
Sara Anne is now five weeks old and is as cute as a button. She is a good sleeper once she is asleep but she is wearing out Mari and Mark. She will not go to sleep for Mark at all and even Mari has problems sometimes. I have gotten up several times in the middle of the night when he cannot get her back to sleep. Last night neither of them could get her back to sleep and eventually broke down and woke me up. I got her to sleep within ten minutes by singing and rocking her. The books that I have been reading say that a baby can sense when you are tired and frustrated and this causes them to have trouble falling asleep. I think that is one of the reasons that she falls asleep for me. This time next year her cousin will be about six or seven months old or so. I can’t wait. I have been thinking about names but have gotten stuck on a middle name for my baby. The doctor told me today that I should bring my fiancé to the next appointment so that he could see the baby. I kept it together long enough to get out of the doctor’s office but broke down crying in the car on the way home. Mark has become angrier at Jet in the last few days as he sees how bad I have been feeling. A few times he has caught me looking at the ring on my finger and sobbing. I still can not understand why he left me and why he did not even bother to say goodbye in person. I gave him all of me and he just left.

August 9
I am now four months into my pregnancy. I felt the baby move for the first time today and I wanted to tell Jet so bad. Without thinking after I felt her kick I went to the phone to call Jet. I had only dialed two numbers when it hit me that I could not call him. He was gone and I didn’t even have a way to contact him. I do not even know if I would have told him even if I did have a number for him. I do not know if he would have even cared. It has been over a month and it still hurts as bad as it did that first day. A little six months ago Jethro Gibbs came into my life and changed it forever. I will always have a reminder of him and I am both thankful and hate him for that. Everything still looks good with the baby but they are still watching my sugar levels closely. My readings have been bouncing between too high and too low. I am a pound heavier that I was the first time I saw the doctor. He still thinks that I should be gaining more weight and that I should have gained about eight to twelve pounds already. The doctor is putting me on a high calorie diet to help me to gain more weight.
The shit had hit the fan with my mother’s relatives. The DiNozzo’s found out that I am pregnant and are not happy about it. For them it is bad enough that I refused to move to Pennsylvania when our parents died and play uptown boy but now I am unmarried and knocked up. My mother’s brother called to find out if we all were going to his daughter’s wedding in October. I told him that I did not know if my doctor would want me traveling then as I will be starting my third trimester about then. He started asking questions about why I was not married yet or had the problem taken care of if I was so stupid as to get knocked up. Then he started to question me about the baby’s father and who his family was. The only thing that I would tell him was that the baby’s father was a marine. They still have not gotten over the fact that my mother married my father as they saw him as inferior to her. After I got off the phone he called Mark to ask what was going on and about how he could allow me to get in such a position.

August 29
The ultrasound showed that I was right and that the baby is a girl. I am going to have a daughter. The ultrasound showed that she is developing wonderfully and that there does not seem to be any problems with her. The doctor is still concerned about my lack of weight gain to his specifications. I am only up five pounds total from the beginning of my pregnancy. My blood sugar levels seem to be a little better at the last appointment. My blood pressure has been going too low now and the doctor took me off the medicine that he had me on. The doctor advised me to keep my stress levels low and I started to laugh. I explained that my stress levels are not going to go down that I am going to be a single parent and while my family would help it was still all on me. I am scared to death that I am going to mess this child up with all of my problems. What am I thinking bring another life into this world when I cannot even keep my own live together?
My fingers have been swollen lately and today I had to take off my engagement ring. When I slipped it off my finger I broke down completely and couldn’t stop crying. I miss Jet everyday and it does not seem to be getting any better. Some days it hurts worse than the first day after he left me. I do not understand why he left me. I didn’t tell Mark and Mari but I found out where Jet transferred to and I know how to reach him now. I do not know what to do. Even if he does not love me he has a right to know that he is going to be a father. There is a large part of me that is terrified to tell him that I am pregnant because at least now I can honestly tell her that her father has no knowledge of her. I have no clue what I will say to my daughter if I do tell Jet and he wants nothing to do with her. I also have so many questions that I want to ask him about why he left and if he really did care about me or if I was just a piece of ass.

September 23
I am six months pregnant now and I am feeling every bit of it. Between having to run to the bathroom every hour to pee and the swollen ankles this is not always fun. Sometimes all I can think and wonder is was a few minutes of pleasure worth all this discomfort. Of course whenever I think that the little princess kicks extra hard and reminds me why I am going through all this discomfort. The doctor is thrilled with all the weight that I am now gaining but I feel like a blimp. Since my morning sickness has left which I am grateful for I have been packing on the pounds. In the last four weeks I have gained almost ten pounds making my total weigh gain fifteen pounds. Mari laughs at me when I complain about how fat I am. She reminds me that she had gained over twenty pounds when she was at the six month mark. I have started to plan out what I am going to do once the baby is born. Mark and I started talking to a lawyer to see if I can get into my trust fund early. If I can I seriously am considering staying home for the first year and then only going part time to college after that. I do not want to miss anything and since it is only going to be me I want to make sure my baby wants for nothing. Sarah Anne is getting so big now and is developing even more of a personality. She is so funny and easy going the majority of the time and is even sleeping through the night the majority of the time which is pleasing her parents very much.

October 16
I received good news from the lawyer. My trust fund will be released to me next week in its entirety. The judge that we went in front of found me to be mature enough to handle the money. The judge did not look down on me for being pregnant and unwed. I think it helped that I could honestly say that I was engaged to be married before I became pregnant and that my brother, sister-in-law and niece will be there as a support system. I think that the judge also felt back for me because I am going it alone. My doctors appointments have been going well and I seem to be about the same. My health is not the best and this pregnancy has not been the easiest but I am surviving. I had to be rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night last week. I had cramping and I started to bleed. They were able to stop the bleeding but I had to stay in the hospital for two days. I honestly thought that I was going to lose my daughter. If she was born now she would have only a little chance at survival. I do not care what happens to me as long as she is healthy. I know that if I was to die that Mark and Mari would raise her as their own child if Jet didn’t want her. I had a will drawn up and signed a few days ago to make sure that my daughter will be protected.
I went into town today to get out of the house and to do something besides staring at the wall. I went to the bookstore and bought more child development books and some language and history books that I had been wanting. As I was looking around the book store to see if anything caught my eye I walked past the wedding books. I realized that it was eight months ago today that I meet Jethro Gibbs. My fingers are still swollen most of the time so I have been wearing my engagement ring on a chain around my neck. After looking at the wedding books for a few minutes I came to the realization that I will probably never get married. I don’t think that I have it in me to let anyone get that close to me again. Even if I still had it in me to have another relationship a young single parent with a child is not really a catch in the dating game. Mark has stopped saying that it will get better as it is not helping my mood at all. I seem to spend my time either crying or yelling at everyone. If Jet would show up tomorrow and apologize I would get back together with him in an instant. I still love him even though I am angry as hell at him for leaving me and our daughter even though he did not know of his daughter.

November 17
I am in the hospital again. I was admitted four days ago. My blood pressure spiked again and combined with my diabetes the doctors are very concerned about me and the baby. At my last appointment my doctor thought that I was starting to go into labor. He admitted me that afternoon to the hospital so that they could keep a closer watch on me and to stop the contractions. The medicine seemed to be helping for a few days but the doctors are still worried. Yesterday the decision was made to deliver the baby early. They put me on some drugs, steroids that should help her lungs to develop more quickly. The doctors feel with the preclampsia, gestational diabetes, and the contractions and with my age that it would be better for her if she was born sooner. Right now she does not seem to be in distress but the doctors cannot get my blood pressure down. The medication that they gave me to stop my contractions is racking havoc with my blood pressure and my blood sugar levels. They took another ultrasound today to make sure that everything is okay with the baby and everything looks fine. Even though I have not gained as much weight as the doctors would like my daughter seems to weight about four pounds making her a very good size baby. When the doctor’s looked at this ultrasound they said that she should be fine.
I had another one of those days when all I want is for Jet to be here. I want him here to wrap me up in his arms and tell me everything is going to be okay. He should be here worrying about his baby to instead of being far away from here. He is going to miss the birth of his daughter and there is a part of me that will never forgive him. I still love him but I am also very angry with him for treating me this way. If he wanted to leave that is one thing but to leave without telling me goodbye in person is another. What he did was wrong. It was without regard for my feelings. I am still wearing my ring around my neck. I am going to have to make some decisions about how I will deal with the questions about her father. She will want to know where he is and why he is not her with us.

November 22
At 10:58pm Julia Elizanne Gibbs Mallory was born at a health four pounds six ounces and over sixteen inches long with an agar score of 8/9. She is doing excellent for a preemie and is not having any major problems. Her breathing has been doing terrific and she has had little trouble with maintaining body temperature. Julia is able to feed without any problems for her. I have found out that breast feeding comes with its own share of difficulties. The doctors say that she might be able to be released from the hospital in four more days if she keeps doing so well. The only problem that Julia has encountered at all was that she had a touch of jaundice right after she was born. She has beautiful dark blond tuffs of hair and has these amazing blue eyes. Her eyes look exactly like Jethro’s. She is the most beautiful baby that I have ever seen in my entire life. I wish that Jethro was here to see what a wonderful and precious baby girl that we made together. When the doctors had to rush me in for an emergency c-section four nights ago I wanted him to be here with me so bad. I gave Mark the number that I had for Jethro and I made Mark promise to call him if I was to die. I wanted my daughter to have a chance to be raised by at least one of her parents. The surgery went fine and we both made it through without difficulty. When they put her in my arms it was the most wonderful experience of my life. My first gaze into her eyes was the most powerful thing that I had ever experienced including her conception. At the same time I knew something or someone was missing from this moment.

Jethro reread the words that Julian had written about their daughter’s birth. He wished with everything inside of him that he could have been there to see her be born. He regretted that he had not been there to help and support Julian throughout the pregnancy. Jethro could understand Julian’s fears about telling him about the baby. He did leave, abandoning him without even telling Julian goodbye in person. Every word that he had read made him fall in love with Julian all over again. He wanted to meet his daughter and build a relationship with her but he also wanted a relationship with Julian again.