chellemomof3
As you may already know, my name is Michelle Smith. I have 3 children. Felicia is my step-daughter (who lives with me) and she is 18; Sarah is 9; and Daniel is 4. They are my life. They are the reason I get up in the morning but you guys that have children know what I mean. I want to be so much more for them and I know I will after the surgery. I married Felicia's dad when Felicia was 5. She has called me mama since before I married her father who by the way has always had custody because Felicia's mom was very neglectful mother and did not stand a chance at custody. Emotionally, my marriage to Felicia's father was a roller costar. I believed in everything our wedding vows stood for (maybe even too much) but he did not. After his first affair, I found out I was pregnant for the first time in my life. This is what I had always wanted-a baby-so we tried to get past his infidelity. He wanted a boy. We had a girl. The marriage grew close for a while then distant again. I really, really tried but it takes two. After many psychiatrist, psychologist, counselors and preachers, he was finally getting his diagnoses of bipolar, depression, adult ADD, and epilepsy, which his family, friends and I already knew. Everyone in his mother's side of the family has bipolar. Now he was finally medicated and we were doing a little better. I got pregnant!! Yippee-the boy he always wanted!!! If you know anyone with bipolar though, you know that they have spells where they want take their meds or admit there is a problem. So were back on the roller costar again. Pregnancy is enough of a roller costar and not him. We basically just lived together with benefits. I kissed his butt taking care of him and trying not to fight. Even when I was sick-due to the pregnancy-I still cooked twice a day and made him a lunch to take to work while all this time, he is hooking up with the neighbor. He put the pregnancy at risk several times. There were times he would get me so upset that I was hyperventilating. Because my son was so high up and I am so short, I had breathing problems. I am sure many can relate. I left him when my son was two weeks old and he was out of town. I was even stupid enough to believe his affairs were over when my son was around 1 year so agreed to move back in --for more abuse, of course. Ha-ha I really did not believe in divorce. People in my family just did not divorce. It lasted three months and another month to fight it out about Felicia. You see, she made me promise her when she was 4 and I told her that her daddy and I were getting married that I would never ever, ever leave her like her other mommy did. We finally won because he did not want our neighbor's husband to know about their infidelity. I agreed as long as Felicia could live with me. After much healing for the entire family, a divorce where he only gets the children when we BOTH agree (the youngest he has never had by himself), very little child support and contact from dear ole dad the kids and I were finally stabilizing for the first time in our life. If felt good to remove all of the emotional abuse we were enduring from our family. I began looking for a way to have this surgery. I am in college to get a degree where I can academically take care of my family and this surgery I prey will make it physically possible. I was on the 6-7 month diet from March-October. Then we got caught up with paperwork. So here I am-8 day away; and now the only thing that scares me is--how will I protect the children from their father if something happens to me. I have stood in between their father and them when needed so many times and it just scares the heck out of me to think that I could possibly have complications. You guys just continue to prey for me and my children, especially on January 26th. Thank you all for throwing out the welcome mat for me. You are all wonderful and truly amazing.
