Girl code: So what if my baby looks like her dad?

There’s that feeling -- you know, when you’re stuck with something that reminds you of someone you would like to forget. This feeling is why some people destroy gifts given to them by their exes, especially if the breakup was terrible.

There are some breakups that happen in hushed tones while others are so public, they may as well have been communicated via a public address system.

I have experienced both types of break ups. One of them is always said in low tones behind closed doors and the other is a source of entertainment. The latter brought forth my beautiful daughter. Sometimes I wonder what it would have be like if the other hushed break up was the one that yielded my daughter. Somehow, I found the strength to pull through.

When my baby’s father broke up with me, I was barely three months pregnant. He wrote me a text and demanded that I give him back everything that he had ever bought or gifted me. Thank God I could count all that using the fingers on one hand. I remember laughing about it and giving him back everything confidently thinking I’d had the last laugh only for him to ask me to give him back his pregnancy too.

You people think women are full of drama, right? You should walk this earth and meet some of the men we date. He made me laugh so hard in the midst of severe morning sickness. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Chop off my tummy and deliver it to him?

Anyway, our breakup was silent but dramatic and every time I think about it, I laugh my head off. In a situation like this, I don’t think I would have been hurt in any way if my daughter came out looking like her father because he was a well packaged joke that brought a smile to my face.

I must say that as much as I was okay with my daughter looking like him, there was that part of me that kept asking God to work on my daughter’s appearance and bring her forth looking like me.

God heard my prayers and my daughter came out looking like my duplicate. Sometimes though, she makes me laugh when she makes a face that reminds me of her father. There’s a way she looks at me sometimes and I almost say; “Bob, I know that’s you. Stop it.”

Bob is her father, in case you’re wondering. Like I said, my case is a little fair and manageable. I know there are some women out there going through worse. By worse, I mean going through a horrible and painful break up with their babies’ fathers then the babies come out not only looking but behaving just like their fathers. As mothers, we are forced to overlook some things and embrace them as they come.

But there are annoying human beings out here who think it is within their rights to keep reminding us how much our children look like their fathers yet they know very well what horrible things transpired between the two of you.

This is the ‘red line’ that we were warned not to cross. If you are my friend and you know about my painful breakup, do not keep reminding me how much my baby resembles her father. Not that we don’t know that already, we do. We just don’t think it’s something worth being said again and again, especially if saying it won’t put food on our table.

Someone who never even met my baby’s father once told me that my daughter walks like the father. Another one who equally never met him told me that she laughs like her father. Some of these people should thank God that I am slow to anger.

One day you will meet a no-nonsense woman out there going through a bad phase and you will learn how to shut your mouth up or, better still, hold your breath around people as you mind your business.

As I wind up this piece today, I can’t help but marvel at how tall my daughter has become, just like her father. While I am here ‘down to earth’. I can almost pick something off the floor without bending!

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