My 27-Year-Old Son’s GF got Pregnant While he had Alcoholic Hepatitis

My 27-year-old alcoholic son’s son is now 2 years old. His mother stayed with my son for four years during his alcoholism, but then left before their son was born.

When my son told me his girlfriend was pregnant, my first thought was this: She sees the tortuous pain my son goes through. Why on earth would she want to pass on the alcohol gene?

I pictured my grandson at 18 going from 0 to 100 with the drinking from the moment he took his first sip of alcohol, like my son did. He said he feels it deep in his genes and that it was like awaking something that immediately started screaming.

I’ll be 74 when my grandson turns 18, and I can’t imagine having to try to coach him through the chaos about AA. His mother seemed to enable my son when she lived with him. When he was too sick to get up and get his own alcohol, he’d ask her to go fetch it for him and she would. God, I hope and pray my grandson doesn’t become an alcoholic.

Today my youngest daughter and I are going to take my grandson to a park on the ocean. She likes being Auntie and taking him places with me. My son’s in detox right now, but if he wasn’t and he was sober, he’d be going with us. We used to have picnics at this park when he and sister were in high school and I still have the picnic blanket.

I see my son in my grandson. I see his sly, skeptical smile when he’s questioning whether what you’re telling him is true or not. He seems like he might thinks he knows better, like the time my son was strapped to my chest in his Baby Bjorn when he was just a few months old. I reached over to rinse off his pacifier under the kitchen faucet, and he grabbed it, put it in his mouth, and gave me that same sly smile. It was as if he was saying, “I don’t need you to do it. I can do it myself.”

I pray every day that he’ll one day say that about alcohol as an adult. Until then, I’ll hold him through DTs when he’s self detoxing and drive him back to rehab for emotional support. I love him more than life, itself, and am grateful to now have his son. He is Irish-Mexican and he is beautiful.