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A single mother’s perspective on PKU: Part V: Telling the father

July 22, 2008

I think this was nearly as hard as discovering that Jack had PKU. Do I tell the father that his son has PKU? Do I tell the father that he is a carrier? Maybe he already knows, maybe he has PKU himself? Do I tell the father that he is a father? He could already have children, I never really found out.

I had not spoken to him for over 9 months now. I am not sure he even remembers me. Was I just that one night stand, did I or do I mean anything to him? If I did surely he would have made some form of contact. Did it even twig that the baby might have been his? Would he have put two and two together? Maybe he did and just kept away from me.

The more I thought about it the more I came to the same conclusion: I couldn’t, no wouldn’t tell him. What about Jack? Was he going to miss out on a dad? It’s a risk I’d have to take.

I had made up my mind a long time ago to go it alone and there was no going back. I wasn’t going to let someone who I didn’t love nor care about into my world. It was hard enough now: what would it be like if this stranger decided he wanted to be part of Jack’s up bringing?

What if, however that we might learn to love each other? Maybe he is mister right, and this was the push he needed. We could get married, have more kids and be one great big happy family!!! Yeah, get real!

Do you know, even today, I still ask myself the same questions over and over again. I always come up with the same answer. This is the first time that I attempted to write down all these questions and it has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. I hope in some ways that it will help bury some of my demons.  I also hope that it may help Jack understand why I did what I did when he is a bit older.

Mr Right was Mr Wrong, and he would never know. When Jack is older he can decide if he needs to find his real father. In the mean time its just me and him (and a lot of help from Debbie).

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