It's a Long Story

Chapter 8

(5 weeks after chapter 6) 

"Mr, and Mrs. Centineo, thank you for joining us." The lawyers say as we sit down. At this point I am an angry pregnant woman. I glare at the people across the table from us. I am now twenty weeks pregnant. We are expecting fraternal twins, a girl and a boy.

The woman who claims to have Noah's child, is across the table from us. She looks familiar, although I have no idea who she is.

The lawyers start discussing what she is demanding and what Noah wants.

"My client, Rose Krauss, wants child support and to be reimbursed for the costs she has spent on your child." The lawyer says with certainty. Noah demanded a paternity test to see if there was any validity to the papers. There was. Noah is very much the father to the child. Who is now ten. I had my accident eleven years ago... which makes the kid, the son of the nurse.

"My client had no knowledge of the child beforehand, why should he pay child support, to the woman who withheld his child from him?" This stung. It hurts to think another woman had his child.

"My client tried reaching out, but was never able to contact him." The lawyer states. And gives our lawyer papers.

"These can be anything and there is no way to check if these are legitimate papers." Our lawyer, Jim, argues. Jim is a friend from college. I was in his wedding, it was a beautiful service. His husband is a wonderful chef. He owns a restaurant downtown.

"We want child support." The lawyer says, sounding aggravated. Jim turns to Noah and he nods. Time for plan B.

"My client had no knowledge of his son's birth. In ten years, a father misses a lot of things. At this age it can go one of two ways. One- his father stays completely absent from his life, and contributes nothing, as he has gotten nothing in the way of fatherhood for his child. Or two- he gains full custody of his son, and only receives supervised visitation from his mother, who is very clearly unfit to be a mother, considering she knew who her son's father was and still denied both, father and son to have any relationship with the other." Jim threatens. This does it, Rose looks scared. Good. It serves her right. The mediator calls for a break and Noah, Jim and I discuss the idea of partial custody, so he won't have to pay any child support and he will get to know his son. I am not so hip to the idea, considering that we will have five kids in a few short months, but Noah has a right to know his son.

Rose decides to still fight for child support payments, so now as we promised, Jim is fighting for full parental rights and guardianship on Noah's behalf. We already did some digging and we have enough to prove her as an unfit mother, however Noah and I did not want to have to resort to this. Him because he wants his son to be happy, and me because I do not want to bring in a sixth child into our family.

After a long day of court and fighting, it has come to Noah and I getting full custody of Samuel. Rose will get fully supervised visits, three days a week. This was not ideal, but we knew going into this, there was a chance.

We took Samuel to get a full psychiatric evaluation to make sure he could handle the transition and to assure myself that he would not harm my babies. Because my babies come first. He passed with flying colors. He is a very shy, but intelligent kid. He actually fits in very nicely to our family. He and Wyatt are so cute together. Sammy was an only child at home, so he loves having siblings now. The adjustment was hard at first, but he is getting settled in. Our house is almost done. So instead of a six bedroom house, like we had planned, with the two unexpected additions to the family, it is an eight bedroom house, we have an office/spare room just in case we get any other unexpected surprises...

(Sixteen weeks later)

Early labor with twin is incredibly common. So here we are yet again. For the fifth time in the hospital. Giving birth to twins. Although labor was a breeze. Until it wasn't. The twins were born, healthy and beautiful. There was an unusual amount of bleeding after the twins were born. I was hemorrhaging. They rush me into the OR and I spend a few hours being operated on. After surgery, I get to finally hold my babies.