I am currently pregnant with my second child. You know how people say that the second pregnancy will be more emotional? I wasn’t going to believe it because I thought my mother was making it up.

But it turns out that story is partly true. But it wasn’t about my baby; it was about my husband.

When I was pregnant with my second child, I wanted to hide away and eat all the junk food I could think of.

But Ava, my best friend, wanted to get me out of the house so we could do something.

“I heard about this cool pottery place,” she told me as she made me a strawberry drink and I propped up my sore feet.

She went on, “You sign up for a kind of pottery party.”

“And we make pottery?” I asked while listing a hundred other things I’d rather do.

“May not always. It would be fun to paint pots instead. Liv, let’s get it done! She smiled over the mixer as she said, “We can make things for the nursery.”

I said, “Fine.” “But you’ll owe me whatever the baby craves that night.”

She said, “Fine by me.” “I’ve already told Malcolm to watch Tess for the evening while we’re out.”

Ava didn’t like my husband Malcolm very much, so the fact that she had already told him about our night out showed how badly she wanted me to leave the house.

When we got to the pottery studio, we saw that fifteen women had already reserved the same time slot. It was a big party. Everyone was just there to relax, drink, and have fun. That’s also what Ava told me she would do. We didn’t know it would turn into a really bad dream.

We were all talking about birth stories. If the women weren’t telling their own, they were telling stories about close friends or family.

Then one woman began to talk about how she was on a date with her boyfriend when his sister-in-law suddenly gave birth and she had to leave.

There was a movie at my apartment on July 4th, and he told me that Olivia was in labor. He had to go, but I asked him why. It was almost midnight, and we were both tired. He had no reason to go along with it either. He said it was because the whole family wanted to be there when the baby was born.

Tess was born on July 4, and I was Olivia. Ava and I looked at each other. What a strange event.

After that, about six months later, she talked about how she was born. All I could do was look at the paint colors in front of me.

“Oh no, Malcolm missed it! “Can you picture it?” She told the group. “He was there when his niece was born, but not when our son was born!” He said he couldn’t leave because he had to watch his niece Tess.

“What are the odds?” Ava told me in a whisper.

“Wait, your boyfriend’s name is Malcolm?” I inquired.

The woman said “yes.”

“And this is him?”

I showed her the background on my phone, which was a picture of Malcolm, Tess, and me, with the baby girl still to come.

She nodded again and looked at me with a blank look on her face.

She said, “Your husband?” “But he’s the father of my child, too.”

As I tried to understand what she said, my heart sank and the room spun. The room full of women telling stories at the pottery party turned into a strange nightmare.

As her words repeated in my ears, the room seemed to close in on me. Not only did my husband cheat on me, but he also had a child with this woman.

Ava jumped up to get the water when I said, “Please.”

It was like a ton of bricks when I heard the truth. The other women looked at each other with understanding eyes as they realized how badly I was feeling.

I had to leave the meeting because I was too stressed out. Tears were running down my face. I stood in the bathroom and tried to figure out what was going on.

I talked to Malcolm today. I had to stop this from getting worse because I was due in five weeks. I needed to know how to move forward before I brought my baby into this mess.

Malcolm reluctantly told me about his affair and the child he had fathered. Our marriage broke into a million bits that can’t be put back together.

Right now I’m looking into divorce lawyers while eating chocolate.

It’s not what I had planned for my kids to grow up in a world where their parents weren’t together. But that deception was too much for me to handle.

He almost missed the birth of our daughter because he was with someone else. I couldn’t live with that kind of man. even more so if he had a child with someone else.

My kids have a half-sibling from their dad’s affair, but they have nothing to do with it. It’s a painful truth, but I’m motivated to keep going and give them a loving home.