When my husband and I got married, we were both only twenty years old.
We were too young, at least according to everyone around us.
Some people looked at us with pity. Others shook their heads as if we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. A few relatives openly questioned whether two people our age could possibly understand what marriage meant.
And when they learned that I was pregnant, their doubts only grew stronger.
“They're just kids.”
“They don't even know what real responsibility is yet.”
“How will a twenty-year-old boy take care of a wife and a child?”
I heard those words again and again.
Sometimes they were spoken directly to me.
Other times, people whispered when they thought I couldn't hear.
At first, those comments hurt.
There were nights when I lay awake wondering whether everyone was right. We were young. We had very little money. We had no savings to fall back on. We had no parents who could easily step in and solve our problems.
But there was one thing I never doubted.
I trusted my husband.
We had loved each other since we were students. Before pregnancy, before marriage, before bills and sleepless nights, he was already the person I wanted beside me.
We weren't perfect.
We argued.
We worried about money.
We made mistakes.
We were still learning how to become adults ourselves.
But whenever life pushed us into a corner, we tried to face it together.
Then I found out I was pregnant.
And suddenly, everything changed.
A Pregnancy We Had Never Planned For
My health had never been particularly strong.
Even before pregnancy, I tired easily and sometimes struggled to keep up with the demands of everyday life. So when I became pregnant, the exhaustion hit me harder than I expected.
At first, I tried to continue working.
I told myself I could handle it.
We needed the money, after all.
But as the pregnancy progressed, even ordinary tasks became difficult. I became exhausted quickly, and there were days when simply getting through the afternoon felt like an accomplishment.
Eventually, I made the painful decision to quit my job and stay home.
It wasn't what we had originally planned.
We had always imagined that both of us would work, save money, and slowly build a stable life.
Now suddenly, we were depending on one income.
I felt guilty.
Every time I looked at my husband getting ready for work in the morning, I wondered whether I was asking too much of him.
One evening, I finally said what had been sitting in my heart for weeks.
“Maybe I should try to work again. We need the money.”
He looked at me for a moment and shook his head.
“No.”
“But…”
“You're carrying our child,” he said quietly. “You need to rest.”
I remember staring at him.
He wasn't saying it dramatically.