I found out I was pregnant while in prison now Im trying to give back to society

She had an unexpected cellmate.Amanda Tarver, a Miami, Florida, wife and mother of two, discovered she was pregnant two weeks after she was put behind bars on a drug conviction.“I didn’t even know if I’d make it to full-term because of my stress and anxiety levels,” she said.

The former convict was sentenced to 24 months in the clink after helping her husband (then-boyfriend) Legend, sell drugs by transferring money — and receiving packages at her apartment.“I really thought my life was over,” Tarver said.

“When they told me the verdict, I was in shock.”Her partner in crime was given 47 months for conspiracy to import a controlled substance.Tarver, 34, a first-time offender, served her sentence at Coleman Federal Prison Complex in Florida from 2015 to 2016.While she and Legend remained in the big house, her son Dorian, 6, at the time, had to stay with her mother-in-law Maria.As a young mother, she “expected to receive a warning or probation” but realized that didn’t matter, “I didn’t know how to explain to Dorian that I would be gone for so long,” she added.The couple’s love story started when they locked eyes at a college bar in 2012.

At the time, Legend was selling illegal drugs to help pay for his education and support his family.“A lot was done out of survival and what I felt my options were at the time,” he confessed.“I was the oldest sibling to a single mom and was the man of the house helping to pay the bills and rent.”Meanwhile, Tarver didn’t think much of Legend’s side hustle because party drugs were popular in the city they lived in, she claims.“I was young and naive and didn’t think of it as something terrible or really consider that we might be harming people,” Tarver said.However, the law eventually caught up with the pair — landing Tarver in the clink with a baby on the way.

When she turned seven months pregnant, Tarver was transferred to a special unit for pregnant inmates, which she describes ...