Johnny Cash Never Had This Kind of Ring of Fire

39 w 6 days
4:01AM

Two days till my due date. Not only is that one of the reasons I cannot sleep, but also the fact that my hips feel like they are be cranked with a pair of pliers; pain that keeps me awake. I decide to check my email and look at what I read and the picture they provided:

"As your baby's head crowns, you will experience a burning or stinging sensation, often referred to as the ring of fire, as your baby stretches the vaginal opening. As soon as you feel this, stop pushing! If you continue to push and bear down, you increase your risk of tearing or needing an episiotomy. The burning or stinging sensation only lasts for a short time and is followed by a numb feeling. This is due to your baby's head stretching your vaginal tissue so thin that the nerves are blocked. The result is a natural anesthetic."

Oh, yeah that is going to help me sleep. Why do they feel the need to provide this photo of a woman that seems to be experiencing the most horrific pain she has ever felt while she seems to not only be pushing, but also trying to get out of the bed as in a "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" and her gown is falling off and she doesn't care because she has a multiple of people walking in and out of her room, looking at her stretched and torn private place, so why would a little flashing of her milk makers make any difference?

I am getting a tad more nervous everyday. I know I can do it. Billions of women have given birth, hey cave woman gave birth with no drugs right? In a cave of all places, with dinosaurs pacing back and forth outside, waiting to hear if their next meal was going to be a girl or a boy. Ok, slightly morbid, I know, but hey I am lacking sleep here. Women have given birth in trains, planes and automobiles. In the woods, in villages with no electricity or fresh water, in their own homes. My main concern is that I will not know when I am in labor and then I will end up with no drugs, delivering my own baby in the checkout lane of Baskin Robbins as I wait for my sherbet on a plain cone. Well, that would give them press, and then maybe they would give me free ice cream for a year, but then again, I am trying to loose all the weight I put on, so maybe I should give birth at the gym or at a weight watchers meeting.

Look, I am going to put it out there for all of you to know something. Something I have not brought up at all this entire blog. Something many woman refuse to comment about, but it's time to come clean. Ah, how do I say this? I have stretch marks. Yes, there it is. Look, I used lotion, I tried to gain weight at a steady pace, but I guess I have to come to terms that I can't wear a bikini anymore. Damn there goes my Hawaii Tropic Suntan Lotion contests. I will have to wear a one piece. And you know what? After reading what I read above about tearing and stretching and all that jazz that is making one of my brows rise so high, it's lost in my hair and my lips purse tightly that I can feel the creases in them crack, I welcome stretch marks with open arms, or skin.

People use the phrase of jumping through hoops. How about through a ring of fire?



Yeah, I am huge and what?

Ready or Not

37 weeks
Picture taken of me at 36w

The day approaches quickly yet quietly. Time is no longer flying, rather it is jetting by, taking with it all that I know as my life now. The pick-up and go moments to go eat, watch a movie or go shopping. The silent nights where the only noise is the humming of the heater and the ice maker making what else, but ice. It is going to go away shortly. There will be a little one, my little one to think about. We won’t be able to go somewhere without taking her along or getting a babysitter. And those silent nights? Replaced with cries of hunger, wet diapers, nights where she may be sick and feeling bad.

When I walk into her room, painted a dark purple, her name on the wall, butterflies all around, her bookcase filling up with stories that we will read to her and one day stories she will read to us, I welcome time to take those other moments away. For they will be replaced with so many firsts. The first day we bring her home filled with excitement and uncertainty, hoping that the maternal instinct does kick in. Watching her sleep, caressing her hair, giving her a bath, making her smile or shall I say she will be mirroring my smile, as I look at her in awe. At how beautiful she is. At how she is part her father and part me, and yet her own little being. She is not an empty canvas, she will have her own personality, but Cesar and I can help paint her life. We can can add some vibrant colors, add some powerful images, some in the background, just as important and less obvious. She will do the rest and we just need to provide her with the proper brushes, enough paint of all colors and let her create – herself.

I am asked often if I am ready. I am as ready as I am going to get, I say. I have prepared for all that can be prepared for. We took the childbirth and CPR classes, we have all the furniture, the clothes, the bottles, the stair gate, the paperwork, everything tangible. We are ready in that aspect. When it comes to being ready as a mother, well I hope I am. I have read many books, spoken to many mothers, but it won’t be until I have her in my arms, will I be ready. Will I know. The moment I become a mother.

I'm Pregnant?

34 weeks (6 to go!)

Today, I realized that I am pregnant. Yes, I know I have been pregnant for the last eight months, but I just became aware that I am PREGNANT! I can't walk any faster than a 9 month old learning to walk, waddling around clumsily, tripping over their own feet or nothing at all. My stomach is gargantuan and stretched and I can't comprehend how its suppose to get any bigger as it feels like a brand new leather couch, with no wrinkles, just smooth and clenched, or like a balloon that someone keeps rubbing on and you scrunch up your shoulders in anticipation because you know that its going to pop with all that pressure. My hair is now lax and lackluster, once lustrous and shiny, it has been enveloped by a cocoon of frizz that reach out like branches or pygmy antennas out toward the skies. I have so many bags under my eyes, that my bags have purses and those purses have wallets. My legs throb and feel like feeble tree trunks after a hurricane and at night they become more painful than hearing about my co-worker's stomach problems. My hot flashes so overpowering that I want to pry off my clothes and vault into the lake, I only sleep for 20 mins at a time like a paranoid cat waiting for the dog to attack and my feet and ankles swell up to the size of Don King's hairdo. Mind you. I am not complaining. It's just that, as I get closer to my due date, my body is changing more than my mood swings and I have lost all control. I am not used to slowing down. I can't even jog, do the jive or breakdance anymore. I walk so slow that pigeons land on me to take a rest. I try not to waddle because from behind, I look like I didn't make it to the bathroom in time and I had an "accident" in my pants. I hear so many more conversations too. There were these two young guys, drinking beer at 1 in the afternoon and as I shuffled on by, a young woman in her 20s zoomed past me. "Did you see the rack on that chick?" the one with the dirty blond hair asked (and it was dirty as in dirt and lint and an ant farm living in there not as in sexy, dirty blond hair like Robert Redford). "I'd like a feel of her rad-a-tats" I looked at both of them, my thin eyebrows raised high in question saying, "Rad-a-tats? Is that a new sour candy or a Nickelodeon cartoon?" Then, these two business men walked my way. Both in expensive suits, shoes shiner than a teenage boy's forehead, dusky sunglasses that made me question where they left their BMW motorcycles. Their serious striped ties secured around their necks, they seemed serious in conversation. Talking about the stock market perhaps, the stimulus plan, that all-important client. As they passed me, one said, "I have to take a leak," Ah, insightful.

Into the Night

31 Weeks Exactly

2:19AM

Enveloped by night's silence sprinkled only with the shuuuuu of the heater and the chup chup chup of my dog smacking her lips as she sleeps, I awaken to find myself at the foot of my bed, staring off into nothing. My expanding belly feels tender and a headache begins to take form, crawling from the nape of my neck, squirming along the right side past my ear. Nine weeks. Nine weeks until moments like this, of stillness will be nothing more than forgotten time. When there will be a miniature being crying, sleeping, suckling, needing me. I dreamt of her last week. There she was standing herself up with the help of her daddy, laughing. Her soft knees bouncing, black hair with tips of sunlight, dark brown skin, and a smile wider than the sky. She looked just like her father and I stood there, awing at how beautiful they both were together, taking in each drop of joy they radiated.

Tonight was slightly different. My headache slightly worse, took me to the living room where I sat in the moonlight that came through the skylights. Passing cars and trucks whoosh passed, the streetlight flickered through my gold curtains. The dreams I just had twisted in the crevices of my brain.

I am sitting on the bed with Cesar. My puppy begins to cough. I pat her on the back and look at Cesar. Olivia coughs up blood. Two small puddles like liquid licorice. I quickly scoop her up, take her carefully to the bathroom, her body becomes weak. I turn on the water in the sink, cup my free hand, fill it and I make her drink some. I do this a few times and place her on the tile floor. I kneel next to her and ask, “Are you ok?” “Yes,” answers this small polish boy who stands before me in just his underwear. His dirty blonde hair, dull and thick on his head. His face covered in light pinkish rashes as though he has dry skin. “My birthday is coming,” he points behind me to a calendar posted under the sink on the cabinet doors. “Which day?” He points again. “April 3rd?” “Yes,” he says. He is very happy. “How old will you be?” “Eight” he smiles. I smile with him. “Yeah, your birthday is coming!”

The cars had stopped and the baby began to kick. I could see my stomach wave in the dim room and rubbed it in circles. It was memories’ turn to bring the other dream I had to light.

I just can’t get my hair right. These bangs won’t do what they are suppose to and this mirror is going to fall off the wall I have it propped up against. The night has fallen heavily and I need to finish getting ready. But this hair! What was that? I ease my way to my bedroom door, and peek out. The living room and kitchen are in a blanket of night. I walk over to the other side of the living room and switch on the light. Nothing. The lights aren’t working. The goose bumps begin to pop along my body, my hair salutes to the fear that begins to pump in me. I walk quickly, but not quite fast enough back to my bedroom door, where the only lights escapes from. My hand is near the doorknob when the door slams. I am grabbing on to the knob with both hands trying to push the door. Something won’t let me in. I have to get into the room. I place the side of my body on the cold wooden door, push and the door cracks enough where I can see my uncle on the other side. Stopping me from coming in. He is wearing his signature black leather jacket, gray sideburns and serious expression. He just stares at me. My uncle died five years ago.

I finally made my way back to bed. Found Cesar and Olivia knocked out just as I had left them and hoped for the same restless sleep.

Rick James, Spike Lee and The Mean Doctor

29 w 3 d

Rick James is Not Pregnant
On one of my hormone-induced sad days, I got ready to go out to dinner, looked in the mirror and cried. My hair has gotten wavy lately and I like it, but on this particular day, the waves in combination with how huge I looked and felt, compelled me to walk up to Cesar and say, "I look like a pregnant Rick James," needless to say he wanted to laugh and he felt bad at the same time. "You do not look like Rick James," he replied. Then I continued with the tears and between those I mumbled, "I am big." "Nothing fits" "I have three chins" "I have a laundry butt" Let me put something out there. I LOVE being pregnant. I am excited, but am I not entitled to have blue days here and there, especially when my hormones are the driving force behind them? So, that whole night, I was down. Felt like hiding in the fridge or the pantry like I was some kind of super freak.


Spiked Punch
Nightmares have found their way into my mediocre, mini-sessions of sleep. Between the leg cramps, my trips to the bathroom and my shifting from one side to the next, I don't sleep longer than an hour at a time, but somehow, these horrid nightmares find a way to invade the only rest I do get. The worst of them all was when I dreamt I lost the baby. It was so real. I was at the doc's office. I went to give a urine sample and when I was trying all that came out was blood. It was in blotches all over the bathroom and I began to freak. I ran out and asked the nurse where my doctor was. When we finally found her I showed her the urine sample that was all red. She told me to lie down and then the nurse began to yell, "The baby is dying inside of you!" I lost it. I sobbed, and screamed and repeated, "But I am 29 weeks! I am 29 weeks!" I collapsed. I then woke up, crying, my head throbbing and it took me a few minutes to realize all was really ok. I have also had nightmares about being kidnapped, violated, lost, and any other word you can find on a true crime show. I know its just anxiety and my mind's way of letting that all out.

The baby woke me up from her kicks and punches for the first time. Once while I was dreaming I was making a film with Spike Lee and when I suggested he "Do the right thing," he punched me in the gut twice real hard. I woke up immediately and realized it was the baby.


What's Up Doc?
It has been said that pregnant woman are a beautiful sight. That the roundness of her body makes her more feminine than at any other time in her life. I have felt pretty good about myself and my ever-growing belly until Wednesday. The day I woke up with a hormone-induced sad mood. The day when people said, "You are getting so huge! You are ready to pop" it effected me more than the days before. I had a doctor's appointment. It was with my regular ob's partner. He wants me to meet all of them. So, I am waiting in the room, hot, slightly sad, and very tired when she walks into the room, looks right at my chart and exclaims, "Wow. You are already over what you should gain for your whole pregnancy. You have to work on this," and then went on to tell me I CANNOT gain more than 5lbs in my last 11 weeks. Stunned, I just nodded. I have gained 33lbs and my regular doctor (who is the head of the practice) said I could gain anywhere from 25-40, so with him I am fine, but this other doctor who can't even bother to wear a lab coat, tells me I am fat. I wanted to cry. I couldn't look at her. After her 5 min checkup, I took the elevator 12 floors down. With each, "ding!" of a passing floor, I heard, "Fat!" "Fat!" "Fat!". I exited the building quickly, and as soon as the frigid air slapped me, I began to cry. Tears escaped only to morph into icicles on my cheeks, small glass sparkling on my face for all to see. I didn't care. Of all the days, why today? Why tell me I am fat today? During my 5 block sobbing session to the bus stop, where people looked at me and then quickly looked away, "Oh, Oh. Pregnant woman crying, don't make eye contact or I heard they can turn you into stone," I wondered what type of mother I already was. If I can't take care of myself now, with my baby in me, will I be able to when she is out? I cried from guilt, I cried from shame, I cried because I was really hungry and I wanted pancakes with whip cream and I was just told I was too big. I returned to work, cried in the bathroom stall before I went to my office which I share with 3 other people. I sat down, began to type, had to get up again, go back to the bathroom and cry again. I cried more because I couldn't stop crying. After a really good cry, I was able to go on with my day.

That night I dreamt with Dr. Spock who kept telling me sadness was an earth emotion and kept referring to me as "captain", Dr. Seuss who recited, "In your jeans, in your shoes, with your waves and chins, there is nothing that you can no longer fit in," and Dr. Huxtable who had the best line. "Have some Jell-O Pudding". Anyone have any?

I’m Sorry. You Have the Right Number.

A call from my father who I haven’t heard from in ten years and before that 14 years, asked, “Cynthia?”. Wished it were the wrong number, but no. I didn’t even recognize his voice. “Yes,” I replied, wondering whom this was. “It’s…” a pregnant pause, “your dad,” Dad, defined as a man who begets or raises or nurtures a child, a term used loosely. “Your grandma is not doing so well.” Whatever disregard I have for him crawled it’s way out of my fiery lips into the corner of the room. This call had nothing to do with us, as nothing ever has. This call was about Vita.

When my younger brother and I were little, looking like twin boys when I had been a victim of a fanatic barber that decided that at five, I needed a tight cut like my brother right before picture day (cut sponsored by dear old dad), we never called our grandparents, Abuelita or Abuelito. We shortened it and called them Vito and Vita and it stuck. They were essential parts of my life. When my parents divorced, they were the only people on my father’s side that showed me any love (this includes my father).

At seven, they moved back to Guatemala. Vito died of cancer shortly after. I didn’t know at the time, that they had moved so we wouldn’t have to see him suffer. Vito was a towering man at six foot four, with ivory hair and a uniformed mustache. He always dressed like he was going to mass and in the wintertime wore a burly, sable woolly hat. His father was British, his mother Guatemalan. He looked like a bi-lingual Sherlock Holmes.

He would sit in his dark green recliner and watch TV. My younger brother and I would crawl behind the long, beige sofa like stealth military agents, quietly making our way over to him. We would sneak behind the chair, Vito oblivious to us. He did have hair, not much, but he would grease it with something I am still not certain of what it was and comb it to one side. My brother and I would silently play around with his hair. Making it into a Mohawk, making pig tails, splitting it in the middle. We’d giggle and I could see Vita from the kitchen laugh and all the while, Vito would just sit there watching Kojak.

It is said that before he passed, in his bed he told my father to tell us that he loved us very much. I was ten and never got to tell him how much I loved him. How he was the only positive male figure in my life.

Now, twenty years later, I get a call about Vita. My last link to that side of me. Once she is gone I will not have any connection from that part. I did visit her three times from 1999-2003. The final time I went with a good friend of mine for seventeen days. My Vita became her Vita. She told us stories of how after only a few months, Vito proposed and she said, “Why not?”. Told us how when she came to Chicago, she started out by cleaning hospitals, learned English in her spare time, studied and became a physical therapist. How one time, a woman with an infected foot was placed in a tub of hot water and that worms came out of it.

The first movie I remember seeing was with my grandparents. Snow White, at Vita’s holiday party. I remember sitting on Santa’s lap and thinking he had some bony legs that hurt to sit on.

We had many laughs in Guate and many tears the day I left because Vita forgot that was the day I was leaving. To her, it was like someone just came and took me away. In a way, that’s how it still feels.

Now, she is bedridden. My father, by name only, taking care of her. Do you understand the irony of this situation? The woman I love, my only connection to the other half of me is being taken care of by the man who left my family and never took care of us. All my hard feelings against him that plagued me throughout elementary and high school, that took years to not forgive nor forget, but to let go, mean nothing right now. He is there for her. Right now she is the one that matters. Not me, not him, her.

We spoke calmly. The first time since I was 12 that it didn’t end with him hanging up on me. We were two adults speaking of a mutual love. We were civil. Who would have thought?

My baby will never know her great grandmother personally, but will know of her through stories and pictures. If God allows her to live long enough, maybe she can hear her voice over the phone. Vita doesn’t remember that I told her I am pregnant, but if I have to call Vita everyday and tell her that I am having a baby, like it’s the first time, every time, I will do so.

My baby, however, will have a father. A daddy. Someone who will be there for her no matter what. To make sure that she is loved and cared for. To play and discipline her. To hug and kiss her. A daddy to look up to. Something that I wish I had my whole life. Something that I am grateful and blessed to say, she never will.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

24 weeks 2 days

Christmas. While the temps decrease, the cups of hot chocolate, holiday festivities, and Christmas songs increase. I walked through Union Station today, past a trio of Salvation Army volunteers playing a Christmas song on their trumpets. Tears began to creep themselves up, waiting to take a dive off the rim of my eyes. The first sounds of Christmas, the first sight of volunteers smiling and asking for donations to benefit those in need, tends not only to pull at my heart strings, but stretch them out and snap them back in like rubber bands. Two minutes later, I passed another trio, this time they were playing Feliz Navidad and I laughed. For that song always reminds me when I sang that in 7th grade with 3 other girls, in front of the entire school. My bright red turtleneck, loose all over except at the neck where it was strangling me, and my white skirt that showed off my white legs (I wasn't wearing tights), and my large, black glasses that took up half of my face - there I was singing like a cat caught in a razor fence, doused in cold rain watching the lightening creep closer - and I sang my heart out anyway (and I think I sang some people out of the auditorium too).

Snow. The first time those frosted flakes fall (no, not the cereal, but that does sound good about now) unto the cold pavement, covering the street and trees and dying grass in an ivory cloak, I take a deep breath and say, "Oh, man. This stinks." I don't like driving in the snow, don't like shoveling, throwing salt onto it that eats away at my new gloves, don't like the way the blanket hides the ice patches like mines, just waiting for an unsuspecting passerby to step, and slip and fall. Sure snow is beautiful - on a Christmas card.

Winter. A time to purchase boots, gloves, a scarf, ear muffs, coat, leggings, thick socks, sweaters and toasty toes. A time to spend plenty of money on these necessities only to have in a short amount of time, one glove, salt-encrusted boots, a ripped scarf, cold ears due to lost ear muffs, a hole in your sock, and shrunken sweaters.

Level of Attractiveness During Freezing Temperatures. I have seen one too many of women, in their tall high heel boots, tiny thin coats, bare ears and thin gloves, slip on oh those mines I mentioned above, have the reddest, driest, most painful looking noses and ears that make me want to touch them to watch them crack and crumble, and hair that isn't covered by a hat, yet by frizz control products and hairspray. Oh, yes and one last accessory for these women are Kleenex as they always have a cold. Then there are the rest of us, bundled up like Arctic ninja's, only eyes are seen, waddling as they walk (I waddle now without all this gear on), you wouldn't be able to point out your mother among these stealth, layered, honorary Eskimos.

Baby. Through this winter of already below 0 temps, my baby, warm and oblivious in her temporary home (her lease expires in 3 months), kicks and punches and reminds me that she's on her way. That next winter will be the warmest one yet in my life. A winter I am throughly looking forward to.