Both From Unstable Homes — Having a Child Forced Us to Build Daily Safeguards to Break the Cycle
In the wee hours of the morning, I stood barefoot on our kitchen tiles in Spintex, Accra, while my newborn screamed in the next room. Kojo had his coat on. His car keys sat in his palm. On the counter, beside the sterilised bottles, a glass held a finger of akpeteshie and that sharp smell.
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I panicked because I recognised the moment when a home splits, when someone "just needs air", and a child learns that love can walk out.
"Kojo," I said. "Don't go."
He stared at the back door. "I need a minute," he muttered, the exact words my father used before he disappeared for days.
Esi's cry rose again, sharp and desperate, and my skin prickled with old memory. I pictured her years from now, listening for footsteps that might never come.
I stepped closer and covered his keys with my hand.
He looked at me at last. His eyes were red. His jaw shook as if he were holding back something huge.
"I can't do this," he whispered. "I'm going to mess her up."
Old instincts told me to attack first, to protect myself by making him the villain. But I saw our baby's tiny chest heaving on the monitor, and I wanted a different ending.
"Then tell me the truth," I said. "Stay here. Let me help you."
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Kojo's shoulders collapsed. He sat at the table, head in his hands, and said words I never heard in my childhood.
"I was two minutes away from ruining everything."
My name is Ama. I grew up in Kumasi in a house that looked fine from the outside. Clean curtains. Polite neighbours. A Christmas tree in December.
Inside, everything ran on instability.
Money arrived, then vanished. Some weeks we ate properly. Other weeks, my mum spread gari and beans (red-red) thin across three plates and offered it as a treat. I learned to stop asking for school trips. I learned to say I was "not bothered" when other kids talked about holidays.
The worst part was not the empty wallet.
It was the emotional disappearance.
My mum did not shout much. She went quiet, as if she left the room without moving. My dad drifted between jobs and moods. He could be warm at breakfast, then slam the front door and vanish into the night.
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When he returned, we acted as if nothing happened: silence was the rule. Denial was the glue.
So I became alert.
I watched faces and shoulders. I listened for tone changes. I learned to keep secrets, swallow conditions, and leave rooms early so I couldn't be left alone with the ache. I grew up believing love meant waiting for the next drop.
Kojo came from a different chaos in Takoradi. His caregivers cared, but they were inconsistent in their love and discipline. Some days, he had warmth and structure. Other days, he was on his own for hours, feeding himself cereal and making himself small. He saw adults cope badly, numb out, lash out, disappear, then apologise and repeat. He swore he would not become that.
We met as adults in Accra at a workplace training course near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. He offered me a bofrot during the break, hesitant and earnest, and I laughed because kindness felt unfamiliar.
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One evening by the beach in Osu, I admitted, "I don't want my life to look like my parents'."
Kojo nodded. "Same. I'm tired of surviving and pretending I'm fine."
We bonded over what we did not want, and we thought that honesty would be enough.
When I saw the positive pregnancy test, I cried from happiness, then from fear, all within the same minute. I bought tiny socks. I watched name videos. I told Kojo, "We're going to be different."
Then fear moved in and started rearranging my thoughts.
I began tracking every mistake I made, convinced one wrong move would pass my childhood forward. I worried about food, sleep, tone, and timing. If Kojo left a mug by the sink, my chest tightened as if clutter could trigger catastrophe.
He tried to soothe me. "Ama, you're doing great."
I wanted to believe him, but reassurance never lasted when I was growing up. It felt temporary, like a sunny hour before rain.
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At twelve weeks, Kojo came home late and found me reorganising the kitchen cupboards, frantic and sweating.
"It's nearly midnight," he said gently. "Come and sit."
"If I don't do it now, I'll forget," I snapped.
"It's just cupboards," he replied.
"It's not," I said, too loud, too sharp, and I could not explain that my body read mess as danger.
Kojo pulled inward as my pregnancy progressed. He stayed longer in the shower. He fixed his eyes on his phone but refused to scroll through the endless noise. He said he was tired, but it sounded like he was fighting himself.
We started arguing about small things because the real fear was too big to name without breaking apart. We argued about reusable nappies, the pram, the nursery paint, and the name list. I fought for control. Kojo fought for space. Neither of us said, "I'm terrified."
At twenty-eight weeks, I found him on the veranda, cigarette smoke curling in the cold air. He had quit months earlier.
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"Are you doing that again?" I blurted.
He frowned. "Doing what?"
"Going backwards," I said. "Slipping."
His eyes hardened. "I'm not slipping."
I should have said, "I'm scared." Instead, my old armour took over.
"You're shutting me out," I accused. "You're leaving me to carry this alone."
"I'm right here," he snapped.
"You always say that," I replied, and I hated myself as soon as it landed. I sounded like my mother, bitter and braced.
Kojo exhaled hard. "That's not fair, Ama."
We stood there, shaking for different reasons, while Esi kicked inside me like she wanted out of the tension.
A week later, at our midwife appointment at Ridge maternity wing, the nurse asked a simple question.
"Do you feel supported at home?"
I opened my mouth to say yes, but my eyes stung. Kojo's hand tightened around mine, and I felt how both of us were performing calm for the room.
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On the walk back to the car, he said, "I don't know how to do this without losing myself." I replied, "I don't know how to trust that you won't." Then we drove home in silence, both ashamed.
After Esi was born, sleep deprivation turned everything up to maximum volume. Our days blurred into feeds, nappies, rocking, and pacing the hallway. Kojo tried, I saw him trying, but I also saw him fading. He would stare into space while the baby screamed, jaw clenched tight.
I responded with control.
I corrected how he held the bottle. I corrected his tone. I corrected his timing. I grabbed the baby from his arms before he could settle her.
"You don't trust me," Kojo said one evening.
"I do," I lied.
He looked at me, exhausted. "You act like I'm dangerous."
My throat tightened. "I act like I'm scared."
He nodded once, bitter. "So am I."
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But we still did not name the biggest fear. We acted like love was fragile because we were, and we kept poking the bruises.
Until the night Esi screamed, and Kojo put on his coat.
Until the akpeteshie sat on our counter like an invitation.
When Kojo sat down at the table, head in his hands, I waited for anger to carry me. It did not. Something softer rose instead, and it hurt more.
"I didn't drink it," he said. "I poured it and just stood there."
"Why?" I asked, keeping my hands flat on the table so I would not shake.
"Because it felt like a door," he whispered. "A way to switch off."
The baby monitor blinked beside the glass. Esi's cries had dropped to tired hiccups.
Kojo swallowed. "Tonight I thought, if I leave for a drive, you'll cope better without me. I thought I was helping."
My chest tightened with a familiar ache. Leaving "for a drive" was how my dad vanished. I could almost smell my childhood hallway.
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I wanted to shout. To turn Kojo into the enemy so I could feel safe inside my rage.
Instead, the truth slid out of me, raw and humiliating.
"I've been preparing for you to abandon us since the positive test," I admitted. "I keep waiting for you to disappear, so I treat you like you already have."
Kojo froze. "You think I'm going to leave."
"I think everyone leaves," I whispered.
He reached across the table and took my hand, gentle as if I might crack.
"I've been scared too," he confessed. "Scared that stress would push me back into habits I swore I'd never repeat."
I stared at him. "And you told me."
He nodded. "Because hiding it is how it wins."
That was the flip.
The danger was not our pasts. It was acting like they did not exist. We were trying so hard to look healed that we stayed silent when we needed help most.
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Fear was not proof we were broken.
Fear was a signal to build support.
In that kitchen, with the akpeteshie untouched and our daughter finally quiet, we decided to stop carrying fear alone. We made it a shared problem, not a private shame.
The next morning, sunlight made everything look ordinary. A muslin cloth on the sofa. Sleepsuits on the washing line. Kojo's mug by the sink.
But we were not the same.
We did not promise perfection. We promised practice.
We wrote non-negotiables on a page and stuck it to the fridge.
No disappearing acts.
No punishing silence.
No secrecy.
No threats to leave.
No shouting over a baby's head.
Then we wrote what we would do instead.
Daily check-ins.
Clear routines.
Outside support.
Repair after conflict.
Our first safeguard was a ten-minute evening check-in. After Esi's last feed, we sat on the sofa, phones away, and answered three questions.
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What felt hard today?
What did you need but did not ask for?
What can I do tomorrow to support you?
Some nights Kojo said, "I felt useless when she cried." Some nights I said, "I felt like I was drowning in my thoughts." We did not always solve it, but we named it, and naming it stopped it from turning into blame.
Our second safeguard was structure. Kojo built a rhythm that steadied him. He took Esi for a morning walk through Achimota Forest. He meal-prepped on Sundays. He put his phone on charge in the hallway at 9:00 p.m. so scrolling could not swallow him.
Our third safeguard was support outside our marriage. Kojo joined a local group and chose an accountability partner, a mate named Kwaku, who answered late-night texts without judgment. I started therapy with a counsellor in Adenta who helped me see that control was my old armour, not my new identity.
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The most significant safeguard was repair.
When we snapped, we apologised quickly, even when pride fought it.
"I raised my voice. I'm sorry."
"I shut down. I'm back now."
"I made you feel alone. I hate that."
I learned to ask for reassurance instead of testing love through silence. When fear rose, I said, "Kojo, I'm spiralling. Please tell me we're okay."
He answered, "We're okay. I'm here."
Kojo learned to step away without disappearing. When he felt overwhelmed, he said, "I need ten minutes to breathe, then I'm coming back." Then he came back, every time.
Esi grew up watching two adults who chose repair on purpose. That became our consequence and our reward.
The cycle started losing its grip.
For years, I believed breaking the cycle meant never doing anything wrong. I thought a good parent always stayed calm. I trusted that a strong relationship would stand unshaken.
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That belief nearly broke us.
Perfection masquerades as safety, but it is only fear in nicer clothes tailored to deceive. It whispers that one mistake will ruin everything, so you must control every detail, every feeling, every conversation. But life with a child does not allow perfection. It demands honesty and repair.
Kojo did not damage our family that night in the kitchen. He saved it by telling the truth before he crossed a line. I did not protect Esi by tightening my grip. I protected her the moment I admitted I was already bracing for abandonment.
Our pasts did not doom us.
Our denial did.
When we named the fear, it stopped controlling us from the shadows. When we built safeguards, we stopped relying on willpower alone in the fight. When we repaired quickly, we taught our child that conflict does not mean collapse.
Safeguards are not romantic, and they are not glamorous.
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They are the boring, brave choices that keep a family steady when emotions surge. A check-in instead of a cold shoulder. A walk instead of a bottle. A text to someone safe instead of a secret. We learned that stability is built in minutes, not promises.
Now, when Esi toddles across our living room, arms wide, laughing like the world is safe, I feel a quiet pride. Not proud of being flawless. The pride of being awake, present, and willing.
The lesson I carry is simple: the cycle breaks when truth becomes normal, and repair becomes routine.
So I ask you this, gently and honestly: when fear shows up in your home, do you hide it until it explodes, or do you name it and build something safer together?
This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.
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