Answered prayer

You negotiated with heaven.

In bathrooms lit by fluorescent mercy,

you studied thin pink lines like they were prophecies.

Negative.

You swallowed tablets and herbs that tasted like soil.

You memorized ovulation windows.

You let strangers in white coats measure hope in millimeters.

You knelt in Baclaran and danced in Obando.

Barefoot faith.

Public longing, private desperation.

You promised things.

You bartered sleep and pride.

Then one morning, two lines appeared.

Not faint but certain.

Finally, after years of waiting,
your prayer acquired a heartbeat.

You carried it for nine months like fragile glass.

You walked slower.

You breathed softer.

You loved someone more than yourself.

And then Maternity leave ends.

The calendar does not care

that your body is still stitching itself back together.

Milk still leaks.

Stitches still pull.

Hormones still riot at 2am

But the office wants you back.

8am to 5pm, they say. Nine hours at work, technically.

13 hours away, truthfully.

Because traffic devours daylight.

You leave while your baby is still warm with sleep.

You return when the house smells like bath soap

and someone else’s hands.

You become a visitor in the home you prayed for.

And then the question arrives like a blade.

Who will hold your child while you hold a laptop?

Hire help.

A woman with referrals.

A rate per month.

A stranger 

who will learn the rhythm of your baby’s cry

before you do.

Another pair of arms

becomes the geography of your child’s comfort.

You scroll the news at midnight.

Maid pinches.

Maid slaps.

Maid spits.
Maid whispers cruelty

where no camera sees.

You have seen so many Tulfo videos.

You lock your phone.

But the images do not lock with it.

Fine, grandparents then.

Blood is safer.

But blood carries memory.

Old beliefs.

Old discipline.

Old phrases that once cut you small.

Love, yes. But also legacy.

And not all legacy is gentle.

You wanted to end certain things with you.

You wanted your child to inherit healing.

Now you stand between salary and skin-to-skin.

Between promotion and presence.

Between applause and afternoon lullabies.

You only have five years.

Five years to become their first language.

Not their financier. Not their benefactor.

Their first home.

You prayed for this child.

You wept for this child.

You promised heaven

you would protect what it finally released to you.

So what is protection now?

Is it additional income?

Or is it a mother who knows exactly how their eyelashes look

when they are about to fall asleep?

There is no villain here.

Only choice.

And every choice will cost something.

 

Money will return.
Careers will forgive.
Corporations will replace you in thirty days.

Your child will not.

They will grow anyway.

With or without you.

The question is not whether you love them.

The question is whether they will remember being loved by you.

You prayed for them.

Do not let the world redefine that prayer.