It was during a Thanksgiving service that I noticed a gentleman struggling to feed a toddler about a year old. I was drawn to his struggles and decided to help. I love babies, so it was natural for me to be moved by what I saw. I took the baby from him and started feeding her effortlessly. Afterward, he took my phone, dialed his number, and saved it so he could also have my number.......CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE>>>>>
He called later, and our friendship began. After talking for a while, I noticed his interest in me, so I started asking questions. “The baby—who’s the mother?” I asked him. He told me the mother was still around but was no longer in his life. I asked if they had been married. He said they were never married, but one thing led to another, and the baby arrived.
As I mentioned earlier, I love babies, so the fact that he had one and there was a “baby mama” situation didn’t change anything for me. I liked him on a deeper level, so when he finally proposed, I said yes.
When we started dating, a lot of things began to unravel—things that, in hindsight, I should have been worried about. I would be in his car with him, and the baby’s mother would call. He would ask me to stay quiet because he didn’t want her to know he was with someone. I couldn’t breathe loudly or even cough when he was on the phone with her.
I asked him, “You said you were no longer together, so why all this secrecy when you’re on the phone with her?” He responded, “You know how women are. When she realizes there’s another woman in the picture, she’ll start misbehaving and causing problems for me. That aside, I want to give her the respect she deserves as the mother of my daughter.”
I bought his excuses. He was respecting a woman, and I felt I had to understand because I would want to be respected too if it were my turn.
Then, he started sleeping at his baby mama’s place. There were times when we would be together, and he would get a call and leave. The next day, he would tell me, “I had to spend the night at her place because the baby was sick and needed help.”
I didn’t fight or argue with him. He was doing it for the baby—a baby I had come to love very much as well. Truth be told, this guy was loving. He was very intentional about me. He took me out on dates two or three times a week. He treated me like I mattered in his life. He bought me gifts and slowly crept into every part of my being, like perfume does when you spray it on your skin.
Despite all this, a lot of things didn’t feel right. He would get calls and walk out to take them. He had a baby girl, but in his house, I saw photos of a baby boy and baby boy clothes. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t rush to ask questions. I would observe, assess, and replay the situation in my mind until I was sure before bringing up my concerns.
One day, we were having a conversation, and I told him, “I would want my first child to be a boy.”
He seemed to jolt out of reality and started acting strangely. I asked what was wrong, but he said he was fine. Later, someone told me that my man had another child—a boy. I still didn’t ask him about it because I was waiting for him to tell me himself. I didn’t think much of it because I assumed he had the boy with the same woman and was trying to hide it from me.
One day, he came clean. Our relationship was over a year old when he told me, “There’s something I should have told you. I have another child with another woman.” I should have been shocked, angry, or hurt, but I wasn’t. I asked why he hadn’t told me earlier, and he said, “When we met, the woman was only five months pregnant, and you know how people want to handle pregnancy news. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”
I should have left the relationship, right? But I didn’t.
The dynamics of the relationship kept changing. There were new layers to it every morning. There were times when I had to be disrespected for the other women to be respected. He would tell me he was going to spend the night with his baby mama, and I would pack his clothes neatly in a bag and see him off.
He would shop for the two women, and I would be the one to arrange the items into two separate containers to be sent to them. Sometimes, I even did the shopping myself. When his first child grew older, she came to love me very much because he often brought her home to me.
He would pick her up and bring her to me. I would braid her hair and make her comfortable. In the evening, I would go with him to drop her off at her mother’s place. No, I didn’t enter the house with him. He would drop me off somewhere, go alone, and later come back for me.
At one point, he had a housing issue and had to move in with me. For the first five months, we lived peacefully. He was as loving as he was caring. But living together revealed many secrets I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
One night, I had a dream that one of his baby mamas was pregnant. When it comes to me, I don’t dream empty dreams. What I see in my sleep usually reflects things happening around me. This same dream came to me on five different occasions, so I asked him, “Is Baby Mama number one pregnant again?”
He crossed his heart and swore, “No, she isn’t pregnant.”
It turned out that not only was the first baby mama pregnant, but the second one was as well. How did I find out? Did I leave the relationship when I discovered this? No!
Part Two comes at 2 p.m today.
