It was the most peaceful birth you could imagine.

At 3:30am, contractions started. I awoke to a tightening in my monstrously swollen abdomen, a belly nine months pregnant plus five of the longest days of my life. I lay in bed in my tiny two-bedroom apartment in San Mateo, California, in the pitch blackness of night, knowing that the day would split me into two. This was my second time going through childbirth so I knew what to expect. Move quickly, I told myself, even though I didn’t want to acknowledge what was coming. They didn’t mess around, these contractions. The intense tightening around my swollen stomach let me know this was real labor, demanding my immediate attention as I breathed slowly through the first one. The pains had all of the rigor of a small military coup. A gradual tightening, leading to a painful crescendo, and then the tightening slowly subsided like a boa releasing an oxygen-starved mouse. I put my legs onto the side of the bed and then with an absence of grace, heaved forward the mountain that had become my body in the last nine months. Swaying from side to side, I slowly made my way downstairs and into the small kitchen. I made myself a cup of black tea with milk and took it with me as I got ready, sipping the hot, comforting liquid. . I called the hospital to let them know we were on our way. I took a quick bath, expecting to see blood between my legs but there was none. A few last-minute essentials, like my toothbrush and contact lens solutions, were grabbed from the bathroom of my apartment. Ken, who had slept on the sofa, walked my bags into the car. I woke sleepy Laura, my firstborn. She was not impressed with what the day would hold and wanted to go back to sleep.  The three of us started out for the hospital within the hour, driving into the darkness of night.

I knew to get moving quickly. My first birth had been what some would call easy. The easy part wasn’t a word that I would use to describe it. I was the one the labor was crushing from the inside out. My water broke at four in the morning and a few minutes later, mild contractions started. Dan, who was now my ex-husband, thinking it would be quite a long and drawn-out day, yawned and went back to getting his rest. I got out of bed, unable to sleep at the sheer excitement of the day I would become a mother for the first time, and started my morning routine. Out our San Francisco flat I waddled, down the three flights of wooden, corkscrew stairs, watching the Golden Gate Bridge light up in the morning sun. I walked down to the gated driveway and retrieved the morning newspaper from the cold concrete. I walked back up the stairs, a strong contraction slowing me down midway, and was sure I wasn’t timing the contractions right. Two minutes and forty-five seconds apart? That couldn’t be right. No way.

I only lasted an hour by myself. Then I dragged my tired husband Dan out of bed. “The baby’s coming fast. I can’t take the pain,” I whined, insisting he drive me to the hospital right that minute. He seemed to take his time in the shower, even shaving his face with a straight razor while I moaned and complained. I wanted a natural birth, but the labor was worse than I had imagined.

 We arrived at the hospital after a ride in the very uncomfortable pick-up truck, instead of the cushioned Volvo, whose radiator had fallen out the night before. Dan went inside to grab a wheelchair I would never ride. I got the hell out of that stiff, bumpy truck, while he was wasting time looking for a help. No one could ease these blinding contractions. The pain was worse sitting down if that was even possible. I ran like mad up one flight of stairs to Labor & Delivery. After I belted through the stairway doors, into a small lobby outside of the elevators, another contraction hit and ran over me like a Mack truck. I braced myself, back against the cheerful flowered wallpapered wall, howling loudly through it. I could see the commotion I caused in the panic-stricken faces of the hushed people in the quiet nearby waiting room, barely visible in the periphery of the searing pain that enveloped me. Once the contraction subsided and I stopped yelling, I opened my eyes and bolted again, with all the grace I could muster at nine months pregnant. I had to get someone to help me before the next contraction hit. This time I made it to the Labor & Delivery nurses’ station. One look at me and the entire nurse’s station emptied out, all of them ushering me into the last available birthing room, turning down the bed, putting me in the bed, pushing papers at me to sign. When the next contraction hit, they yelled, Push! We can see the baby’s head. You’re nearly there.

Now, just beginning labor with my second baby, this newly formed A-team was headed to Marin General Hospital – my ex-boyfriend Ken, my nine-year old daughter Laura, and me.

I wasn’t excited about having this baby. Nope, not this one. I was going to have this baby without having a husband and without having a partner. In a few short hours, if this labor was anything like the first one, I was going to be a single mother of two. While I tried to be upbeat about my future, and even excited about the baby, I couldn’t get to that place very often. I calculated our finances over and over again. Could I keep our apartment and feed us on my salary plus a little child support? I was worried for all of us, and not at all happy at the prospect of doing this alone.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Last Thanksgiving, after dating for a year and a half, Ken had asked me to marry him. I excitedly said yes. He used his late mother’s engagement ring to propose to me, which I loved, and we planned a small wedding in May. His father had balked at using his late wife’s engagement ring, because when he had proposed to Ken’s mom fifty years earlier, he hadn’t had much money. The diamond set in the ring was small. Small but beautiful, I thought. An emerald cut diamond in platinum. It fit my tiny hand perfectly.

One of the drivers for the wedding was that Ken was tired of the distance between us. I didn’t disagree, as we lived 40 miles apart. But I didn’t feel loved when he told me that there were two options in our relationship, either get married by his summer deadline and live together at his house, or break up. Wasn’t there some middle ground, I asked, trying to broker a compromise? No, Ken was unwavering. We could take either the north going road or the south going road, but nothing in between.

The February before the wedding, I became pregnant. Ken wasn’t happy about this, either. Even though we both wanted a baby together that we planned to start trying for after we were married, he was adamant that there was supposed to be the wedding first and then the baby second, and only in that order. “But Ken,” I tried to convince him, “you are getting both of the things you want. A baby and a marriage.”

We didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant, we were saving that piece of news for after the wedding, and the heaviness of my secret weighed me down.

I could see that it continually irked him, that I was pregnant before the wedding. Every time the pregnancy came up in one of our private conversations, his expression hardened. He seemed to be slightly but increasingly unhappy with our engagement and the prospect of our future together.

A month before our wedding date, his father announced his plans to marry the woman he loved in South Carolina. Everyone was so happy for him and his bride to be. They had found love together later in life after Ken’s mother died from breast cancer a couple of years before. I couldn’t travel with Ken because I was too tired and uncomfortable with the pregnancy, even though I was just 3 ½ months along. Besides, there was a fair amount of wedding chores that needed my attention. I asked Ken for some more help with the details of the wedding right before he left for South Carolina and he said, “If I thought you needed help, I would help you. But I don’t see that anything needs to be done.”

Ken travelled to South Carolina to see his father get married. While I was happy that Ken was part of their celebration, I was feeling a little bit ignored and getting more anxious about finalizing all of the details of our own wedding.

Three days before our wedding, it all fell apart. I got upset when I found out that a secret bachelor party was scheduled. Ken had some heavy drinking buddies in town from England, and I was worried that they would be drinking too much, drive or bike while under the influence, and that there would be an accident. I have to admit, I did tend to get a little paranoid when I was pregnant and I’m sure what I expressed to Ken about this was emotion-filled. Ken and I had a tense conversation over the phone about his safety that night. I mentioned that if he was feeling so cavalier about getting drunk and being on the road, that maybe we shouldn’t get married.

Ken asked me to repeat this to his friend Harvey. I had to get him to repeat his demand because I couldn’t understand what he wanted. Why was he focused on this one detail? “Just tell Harvey that the wedding is off,” Ken barked at me.

“The wedding is off,” I told Harvey after his hello. “Now please put Ken back on the phone.” I expected Ken and I would continue our conversation and work things out. Instead, Ken shocked me by saying, “Since you told Harvey the wedding is off, then the wedding is off.”

True to his word, the wedding was immediately and definitely cancelled. My world was turned inside out as I called wedding guests and told them there would be no wedding. I cried for five days straight and lost the ten pounds I had gained from the pregnancy. I wish I could have disappeared into a hole. I had nine-year old Laura to nurture and a 17-week baby in my body to take care of, and so somehow, I woke up every day and got out of bed. I didn’t carry on with dignity or grace – not at all. I avoided people and cried all day. I cried myself to sleep. I called Ken a couple of times and asked for another go at our relationship but that door was always shut. It was a difficult time. It was an especially sad time. The months of the pregnancy, and the waiting for this new chapter in my life, dragged on.

Truth be told, Ken and I had a pretty tumultuous relationship. Both Americans, we met in Quito, Ecuador four years back. It was a Saturday night in January, summer in Ecuador, the trip I took to celebrate my 30th birthday. I was traveling with a tour group. The final five days of our trip was a cruise on a catamaran in the Galapagos Islands. Ken was 35 and had quit his job as a software engineer to travel for eight months with a few buddies all through South America, backpacking and river rafting and adventuring. Although we hit it off the first night we met, drinking mixed drinks at an American bar and dancing until two in the morning, Ken was always plagued by fears that I wasn’t interested in him. He saw himself as an adrenalin junkie and a bachelor. He had broken up with every woman he had ever dated. And I had broken up with every man I had dated. We were evenly matched there, but he ultimately had the final say in our relationship.

After hiking and mountain biking for two-weeks around Ecuador, my tour group and I spent a night in Quito before taking an early flight to the Galapagos Islands the next morning. Our Quito layover happened to be on a Saturday night. “Who’s coming out with me tonight?” I asked the group over lunch. There were no takers in the group of 20. Most tried to discourage me. “We’ve got an early flight tomorrow morning,” they said. “Quito is a dangerous city,” they cautioned. I was not deterred.

Ken and his two friends came into the bar where I was sitting alone that evening, sipping a beer. They sat at a table next to mine and within a few minutes, asked me to join them. They were a disheveled bunch who hadn’t had a haircut in months, and the clothes they were wearing were worn through in places and were wrinkled and dirty. They told me their exciting tales of backpacking trip after backpacking trip through South America. They’d been traveling together for five months, and they had three more months to go, all having quit their jobs to take time to explore as much of South America as they could. I was awestruck at their adventures and their stories, and of Ken specifically. He had curly brown hair that was down to his shoulders, bright blue eyes, and a square jaw. He was only 5’8” which was lucky for me as I was the only woman I knew to prefer men on the shorter side. And he had something about him that defied explanation, his charming way with everyone. It was magic. I watched him figuratively open doors for himself and disarm each and every person he encountered with his warm and engaging personality. He travelled the world with this easy grace of connecting fully and authentically with everyone he met. I was completely head over heels crazy about him by the end of the evening.

It took a couple years for Ken and me to reconnect in the United States, and once we did it was the most fun and active romantic relationship I ever had. We flew to Mismaloya Beach in Mexico where we ran for an hour in a tropical rainstorm and swam for miles in the open ocean. He introduced me to rock climbing on the ocean cliffs in Land’s End, England. We backpacked on the John Muir trail in Yosemite. Near his house in Fairfax in near Marin County’s Mt. Tamalpais, he took to the nearby trails on his mountain bike. While he biked, I ran on those same trails. It was thrilling and exciting to be in a relationship with Ken. The only problem that kept arising was that Ken couldn’t seem to accept that I wanted to be with him. Every little argument would go back to the same place – that first night in Quito, Ecuador, where he would always insist that I was more interested in one of his buddies than I was in him. It just wasn’t true, and I could barely remember the friends he was with, but Ken’s insecurity around that night and whether or not I really loved him never went away, no matter how hard and how many times I tried desperately to reassure him.

Ken turned out to be surprisingly enthusiastic at supporting me during the short labor. He had recently, during my eighth month of pregnancy, expressed his desire to be in the delivery room when our baby was born. I agreed to have him there, secretly hoping he would change his mind during the momentous event of our baby’s birth, and we would get back together. He was at my side throughout labor, encouraging me and asking excited questions to the doctors and nurses about the progress of the labor. After just two hours at the hospital, our baby was born. Charles Alan Moore. Except she wasn’t a boy. When Ken hollered, “It’s a girl!” I could hardly believe it. Although I didn’t find out the baby’s sex, I felt it would be a boy that would leave me too quickly to spend more time with his adventurous dad.

I was so convinced the baby would be a boy, I didn’t even have a girls’ name picked out. I’d thrown out all of Laura’s barbies, knowing that we wouldn’t need them anymore. I’d have to start from scratch on finding a name for this baby girl. She would take my last name, that was one surefire decision I had made in the midst of this chaotic pregnancy. She wasn’t going to have Ken’s last name. He hadn’t been around at all during my pregnancy after the wedding was cancelled. He said he didn’t want to be with me or have anything to do with the baby early on. I didn’t know what the future would bring, but I knew there was a good possibility he wouldn’t be around, and I didn’t need to be dragging his last name around with us if he was halfway around the world.

She was a perfectly beautiful baby. Dark hair, slate blue eyes that would change to brown, and a  round baby face. She looked a lot like Ken and a lot like my older sister. Still, Ken demanded a paternity test. This paradox didn’t make sense to me. He wanted to be at the hospital for the birth of “his” baby and at the same time told me he wasn’t sure the baby was his. So tell me where and when you think this baby was conceived, I challenged him. He knew in his heart she was his child. We were together every day and planning our wedding and future together without pause. But he was going to try to hurt me by challenging that, and he did. He signed the birth certificate after we picked out a name for her. Looking back I was being accommodating to the point of being desperate to get back together with him. We picked Chloe – same as most of his family, starting with a C or a K. There was Ken, his sister Karla, his mother Carolyn and his father Carl. Chloe fit right in. Two middle names, one that he chose from his side of the family, Anne, that was part of his sister’s and his mother’s names. I chose Alva from my side of the family. Chloe Anne Alva Moore. The most beautiful name for this gorgeous baby I got to take home. Now I was starting to get excited. A newborn baby, to me, was just about the best thing in the world. I fell in love with Chloe, hard, and promised myself I would do everything I could to make sure she felt special and knew that she was loved.

I took her home from the hospital on a Thursday morning, October 24, 2002, during the first gentle and cleansing rainstorm of the season. I really wanted our home to be a house, but I couldn’t afford it. We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the wrong side of town. Our apartment was in a complex of 600 units, built in the 1950s. Referred to as “the apartments” in a derogatory tone by those living in the suburban houses around it, we were at the bottom of the social standing in the area. Even Ken had called our apartment “seedy,” maybe because it was a multi-unit building with a carport instead of a garage, or perhaps it was the metal cabinets or the cheap carpeting inside. It wasn’t run down or dangerous, but it wasn’t a house and that made it less desirable than owning even the smallest cinderbox dump nearby.

Late in my pregnancy, I moved myself to the smaller bedroom and moved Laura to the master bedroom. I cried myself to sleep after the bedroom move. Laura got a cool bunk bed that she could eventually share with her little brother or sister. I moved my queen size bed into the smaller bedroom when I had expected, wanted even, to be living with Ken in a real house. I got downgraded. Alone and pregnant, another reminder that I was not where I wanted to be.

The day after we came home from the hospital was Friday. Despite being three days postpartum, I found an hour to file a motion for child support at the Redwood City courthouse. By filing I mean I took the papers that I had filled out by hand, drove them to the courthouse, waited in line at the Family Law counter. I handed a clerk the paperwork and a check when it was my turn, and was given a court date and a stamped copy as a receipt. I would have liked to have an attorney represent me, and hand it over to someone else, but I didn’t have enough money for an attorney. I’d have to do it myself. Simple as that. It was a lot of reading. Reading each line of each form and reading the instructions for the forms, which was tedious, but not really difficult. Most of the content of each form didn’t even apply to me (and probably didn’t apply to very many people). Figuring out which sections I did need to fill out was the toughest part, and even that was confusing but not impossible. I was motivated to go line by line, wading through these forms. I had another child to take care of emotionally as well as financially, and I wasn’t going to let our family down. I was very anxious about spending too much money, worried that I wouldn’t have enough money to cover all of our growing expenses, so I filed for child support as soon as I could.

At the end of my pregnancy, I had asked Ken to pay child support.  He agreed in principle to paying child support, he wasn’t willing to decide on a number with me. He wanted to leave it up to the judge to decide. That decision of Ken’s marked the beginning of our thirteen-year relationship with the court system. I even tried to file the paperwork ahead of time, before the baby was born, but the court wouldn’t consider it. An unborn baby is not yet a real live person according to the family law judge I talked to, and until it is, the judge won’t write any orders. Wait until the baby is born and then come back, they said. So there I was.

Ken and I did agree, during that one conversation late in my pregnancy, that he would visit Chloe twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5-7pm in my apartment. I didn’t think it would last very long. Ken was a wanderer by nature. He had lived in England, France, UAE, and South Africa during his adult life. He had travelled to more than forty countries. He wasn’t likely to stay close by. This agreement, when Ken would visit Chloe each week, was the only agreement we ever had on Ken’s visitation.

That Ken and I only had one agreement between us was in stark contrast to my current coparenting arrangement with Laura’s father, Dan.

I was a very young 22-year old when I married Dan. Dan was 45. We separated after being married for four years, when Laura was still a baby. Dan and I had a very agreeable separation and an uncontested divorce. We had an arrangement that worked out for both of us. I let him keep all of the financial assets from our marriage and he let me raise Laura without any interference. Dan would take Laura any weekend I asked him and he would see her once during the week for dinner. He would help me if I needed help fixing my car or something around the apartment. We supported each other after our separation and were always friendly. Our relationship worked for us. After we separated I longed to be in a family with a husband and more children and once I met Ken, I thought he was the one. But instead, here I was, a single mom of two, with a potentially contentious co-parenting partner. It hadn’t at all worked out the way I wanted it to.

The courthouse in Redwood City is not exactly a beautiful building. Rectangular, a tired and dull beige color, dotted with too-small windows, and eight stories high, it is the tallest building around. It looks like an oversized office building in the middle of a suburb, not a stately brick and column courthouse you might see in other American small towns. Nearby is the Traffic Court building, a few mid-story parking garages, and some well-marked Jurors parking areas. The main building I went to housed the Superior Court, including the Family Division and the Criminal Division. A whole bunch of places you hope never to see.

Walking into the public entrance, I encountered a scenario much like that in an airport security line, only on a smaller scale. “Take your belts off and any metal on your body. Any loose change? Place it in the bins.” I placed my purse and paperwork in a bin. Belts, loose change, and big jewelry were not something I had in abundance. I waited for the security person to wave me through the metal detector, and then I collected my belongings on the other end.

On the first floor of the Redwood City courthouse, there is a large office area with various clerks sitting in desks behind many counters, similar to the DMV. You waited in line to file your papers, which simply meant to hand them to the clerk and have them entered into the court’s computer system. Probate, family law, small claims court, etc.- it was all the same. Sometimes you might wait in line for ten minutes, sometimes over an hour. The paperwork needed to be in order – filled out correctly, signed and dated, with the proper number of copies made, two-hole punched at the top, but not stapled, and a filing fee needed to be paid as well. There were always the same conversations taking place in the family law area in the long line that usually marked this area of the massive room we were in. People waiting to file their forms complained about their soon to be ex, explaining to the next person in line how horrible they were, how they had put the children in danger, about how deeply and thoroughly they had been wronged. I understood why they did this. No one wanted to be divorcing, no one wanted to be in a custody battle, no one wanted to end up here. I didn’t want to be here either, the only difference I had with most of these people is that I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. So I kept my head down and waited for my turn with the clerk.

As an ‘in pro per’ I had one additional step to take before I could file my paperwork. ‘In pro per’ is a Latin term that means “for oneself” or “on one’s own behalf.” It’s a fancy way of saying you don’t have an attorney and are representing yourself. I needed to see the Family Law Facilitator to have my forms checked before they could be submitted, which is a requirement for anyone in pro per. There was an office downstairs in the basement of the court building. The Family Law Facilitator was there, and his initials needed to be on my forms before the clerk would would accept them on behalf of the court.

The Family Law Facilitator’s office was extremely busy. They posted a sign-up sheet outside their closed door at 7:00am sharp, and it was filled up within ten minutes of being posted. There were eight spots on the list. After that no more people were guaranteed a spot, but you could wait to see if you could get in at the end, time permitting. The Family Law Facilitator started taking the names on the list at 9:00am sharp, and domestic violence cases had the first priority.

                Don C. Franchi, attorney-at-law, was the Family Law Facilitator. He was paid one of the smallest salaries of any lawyer working in the courthouse, but he had passed the bar exam just like all the private attorneys and judges in court. His job was to help people identify the forms they needed, and to make sure they were filled out correctly. He was there to support the judicial process by helping those of us who couldn’t afford an attorney. It was noble work but also extremely routine. I thought he must have bored out of his mind most days. He was always pleasant and helpful and greeted everyone with a genuinely warm and friendly dimpled smile. My forms were always in good shape so it was a quick sign off for me. I felt a little sorry for this guy, a smart and cheerful young man who went to law school and passed the bar, and instead of seeing his own clients he was a resource for all of these people who had no one else to help them. This population of people without help included me.

In the paperwork I filed, I asked for sole physical and legal custody of Chloe, because she lived with me all the time and because I wanted to be able to make the decisions about her life. Even though Ken and I had already agreed to his visitation informally, I asked the court to make it official by asking for “reasonable” visitation for Ken, 2 two-hour evening visits per week in my apartment. I also asked for “guideline” child support which is the amount of child support that is set by a program in California called the Dissomaster. The Dissomaster calculates child support based on about twenty numbers. The most heavily weighted numbers are the amount of income each parent earns and the percentage of time the child spends with each parent.

After filing for child support, I received two copies of the paperwork stamped with the official court stamp, our case number F072522, and the clerk’s signature. Because I filed the initial paperwork, or motion, I became the Petitioner and Ken by default became the Respondent in what was now referred to as our “case.” The Petitioner and Respondent labels would remain with us throughout the entire case, no matter who filed what in the future. Because Ken and I weren’t married, our case was not classified as a typical child support or child custody case in only one way. It was classified as a paternity case, and paternity cases were considered confidential cases. Confidential cases were not accessible on line, which wasn’t a big issue but did mean that to view any of the motions or judgements in our case, we needed to go in to the courthouse, in person, and read the physical file.

The court kept one copy of my paperwork which went into our case folder, and that folder would go up to the judge or the commissioner the week before our hearing. (A judge is elected, and a commissioner is appointed, yet they have the same powers inside the courtroom.) The rest of the time the paperwork was stored in the basement of the court building. This first hearing was set for December 6, 2002, just over six weeks away. In the meantime, I needed to have Ken served with the papers. And I needed to prepare. Or just stress out.

Ken received my filing. I had a process server send them to him in the mail.  A few days before the hearing he formally responded with his own set of “responsive” forms by filing them with the court and he had a friend of his formally serve me by sending them to me in the mail. He asked for joint custody and a vague “reasonable visitation.” He asked for a blood test to determine paternity. He also stated his desire to “substantially contribute to the health, education, and welfare of this child.” And finally, Ken expressed his desire to spend more time with Chloe, which he called his “expansion of visits.” This would have surprised me a few months ago, but Ken had been coming to visit Chloe regularly, the two evenings a week that we agreed on, at my apartment. He seemed a little hesitant at holding a baby in the beginning, yet he kept trying and seemed to be enjoying spending time with little Chloe, especially when she fell asleep, lying safe and satisfied, on his chest.

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December 6, 2002 was the date of the first 20-minute short cause court hearing in the Family Law department of San Mateo Superior Court.

Commissioner Susan Greenberg heard the case.

Ken and I appeared in pro per, acting as our own attorneys.

We arrived in court a few minutes before the official start time of 9:00am.

Taped to the door of the courtroom was a list of everyone who had a hearing scheduled at this time, with this commissioner, and the names of their lawyers if they had them. Each case got a number for the day. Ours was number 9 out of 20.

We each went to the bailiff to check in, separately. It’s the bailiff’s job, before each hearing, to account for everyone who is on the list.

And then, a few minutes after 9:00, the hearing started. All of the parties were in the courtroom including their attorneys if they had them, plus the court secretary, the bailiff, and the court reporter. It’s actually a public hearing so anyone over 18 years old can attend. The secretary had everyone stand and swore everyone in. And then as everyone continued to stand, the judge walked in from a door behind the big raised desk, sat down, and motioned for everyone else to sit down, too.

There was a routine to the start of each session. The judge asked if any case requested a continuance. Typically a couple of cases did, and a new court date was set by the judge by conferring with the parties in front of the entire room. That was the end of any more activity for those cases that day. Next, the judge asked if anyone needed a same day mediation appointment. It didn’t happen every day, but it happened about half of the time, and the judge sent those parties straight to the mediator’s office on another floor. And then, the judge started calling each case on the list in some semblance of order, except that the cases with attorneys were called first and cases without attorneys were called last. Attorneys at that time made $300-400 per hour and judges did their best to make sure that the attorneys were not charging their clients wait time.

Finally I heard “Line Nine, Moore versus Hott” and our case was being called by the Commissioner. During the hour wait, I had gotten incredibly anxious. The blood drained from my face as I stood up. Ken and I walked up to the separate tables for Petitioner and Respondent, and I felt more stiff and wooden with each step. We were each asked to state our full names into the microphone for the court reporter. I could barely speak loud enough, and I had to repeat my name a second time. Ken’s voice came through – loud, strong and confident. Then we sat down at long rectangular tables that faced the Commissioner and our hearing began. The Commissioner began talking to us and asked us each separate questions. It was clear that she had already read the motion I submitted and Ken’s response to it. Each of us was allowed to talk to the judge, but we were not allowed to speak to each other during the hearing.

Ken started out right away by saying that he wanted a paternity test. Commissioner Greenberg paused, looked straight at each of us and asked Ken, “Did you sign the birth certificate in the hospital when Chloe was born?”

“Yes, I signed it,” Ken replied.

“If you are contesting paternity, you have just sixty days from the birth of the child to remove yourself from the birth certificate voluntarily. So if you believe that you are not the father of this child, you have just sixty, well, actually it’s December 6th and she was born on October 22, so you have about fourteen days to remove yourself. If you do, there will be the original birth certificate issued, and then a second one issued without your name. If the paternity test comes back with you as the father, you can request a third birth certificate which will include your name again,” Commissioner Greenberg told Ken.

Ken indicated that he understood. I was angry imagining Chloe with three birth certificates because Ken couldn’t make up his mind. Or was just playing a game. This was my child’s life, not a circus act.

The judge ordered a continuance, because Ken contested the essence of the motion. The rest of the outstanding items would be continued to the next court date. In the meantime, a paternity test needed to take place. Commissioner Greenberg asked me if she needed to order the paternity test, which she had the authority to do. “No,” I responded because I was not going to get in the way of the paternity test.

The hearing was continued until Jan 22, 2003, when the results of the paternity test would be available. We were also referred to mediation, which was scheduled for Jan 3, 2003.

And then we were free to walk out of the courtroom. I walked out as quickly as I could, feeling tremendous relief that it was over, and ready to put this behind me and get back to my kids.

I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet. When I get anxious, I can’t find my words and I get really quiet. Neither of these qualities is good for representing yourself in court. I thought of all the right things to say later, as I replayed the court session over and over in my mind. I became even more anxious and upset thinking about what I should have said. Ken was a natural in court. He excelled at expository speaking. He had no qualms about asking for what he wanted and making it sound like it was perfectly reasonable, even when his request was utterly and maddening off the rails. In contrast to his confidence, I was afraid to speak up, to advocate for myself. When I did speak up, it went all wrong. I was a wimp, a mouse. I wanted to be fair. I had to get better at this. I vowed to do better in court next time. I would think of all the right things to say, I would say them, and I would come off confident and self-assured.

I felt humiliated that Ken wanted a paternity test. I never gave him any reason to doubt that the baby was his. The unstated accusation that I wasn’t faithful was piercing and painful. Our relationship had problems that I contributed to but fidelity wasn’t one of them. I felt that Ken was ridiculing me, and in public, to make it even worse, by asking for proof that Chloe was his child. I had always been sensitive, and I would cringe even if someone thought I was doing the wrong thing. I was embarrassed in court thinking that everyone in the courtroom viewed me as unfaithful and judged me harshly.

And I was angry that Ken was using Chloe’s birth certificate as a pawn. He was ok with Chloe having three birth certificates? How was I supposed to explain that to her when she got older? All because he said that he wanted a paternity test and contested paternity? What happened to the part about Ken wanting to be at the birth because it was his baby? He didn’t mention that in court. And although I should have, because it would have helped my case, I didn’t either.

Online I researched paternity tests, which were fairly new at the time. I found out that I didn’t need to go. Only the child and the “possible” father needed to go to the testing lab, get a cheek swab, and then wait for the results. The mother’s participation was optional. My participation in this fiasco was an easy decision. I didn’t want any part of it. A few days later, I insisted that Ken pick up Chloe from San Mateo to take her to the testing site in San Francisco and bring her back to San Mateo again. He was mad that I wouldn’t drive her to San Francisco. I was mad that he was involving an innocent baby in this craziness, so we were even.

Ken emailed the results of the test a week later. Yes, Chloe was his biological child. Of course she was. What a crummy thing for him to do – to publicly accuse me of infidelity, to even consider issuing Chloe three birth certificates, to make us go back to court for another session. And the cost of the paternity test was money down the drain when it could have gone into Chloe’s college fund. Why couldn’t Ken just look at Chloe and be honest with himself? She looked exactly like him.

New Year’s Eve came right up and I was going into 2003 as a single mom with two children. Still on maternity leave, I knew that going back to work was imminent. I was solely responsible for these two children, and I felt it. I felt the pressure. I felt daily that I failed them. That our small apartment wasn’t what I wanted for my children. That we were poor and I was a single mom. And I was lonely. Lonely for someone to love me. I missed Ken. I still dreamt of the family I thought I would have with him. I was happy that I had another beautiful daughter to love, but I still mourned the life I had hoped for with Ken.

The night of New Year’s Eve, my ex-husband Dan was over at our apartment to celebrate. We had always stayed friendly, and he visited us a few times a year which was usually fun for everyone. However this year I wasn’t finding any comfort in his visit, and I started unraveling. Within minutes I planned an escape. I left the apartment with Chloe, strapped her in the carseat, and drove to Ken’s. I called Ken to let him know that I was desperate, despondent, couldn’t stop crying, and I was literally driving over to his house in Fairfax to visit him. Ken wasn’t at home but he was nearby, enjoying a neighborhood New Year’s Party. I was a wreck. Ken came home from the party he was at to deal with me. I decided to be completely honest and tell Ken how much I wanted to be with him. He listened to me, in between sobs, but told me that he didn’t want to be with me. At all. It was very final on his part. I cried when I wasn’t sleeping, woke up in the morning at his house still crying, and finally, not getting him to budge one bit, I drove home sobbing with Chloe the morning of New Year’s Day, feeling completely exposed and broken.