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.

Do As the Jeffersons and Move On Up

All George and Weezie had to do to was own their own chain of dry cleaners and hire Florence to move on up to the east side. My placenta on the other hand better move it on up to the north side of my belly button by the 40th week or I may have to have a c-section.

I was like George, all short, and dancing my way to my doc's appt today and I came out looking like Louise when Mother Jefferson came over for dinner only to criticize her meatloaf. The doc told me that I have a "low-lying placenta" explained as "a placenta that lies low". So, no need to worry now about it, as long as it moves up where its suppose to be or a c-section it will be. That's like telling Florence she's not getting a raise.

I am taking it all in stride as much as I can because there is nothing I can do about it. I can't reach in and move my placenta up (that would hurt and be gross), so I will just have to wait.

Perhaps, in the meantime I can watch some of The Jeffersons reruns and laugh as poor Ralph the Doorman gets another door shut in his face with no tip or admire how George can pull off that smoking plaid jacket.

Hopefully soon I will finally get a piece of the placenta pie. (Wait.... you know what I mean)

Our Girl

21 weeks 4 days

Cesar and I are having a daughter! Wow, that has a whole different tone to it then just saying we are having a baby girl. Daughter sounds more serious. More "parental". I am more than halfway through my pregnancy and I don't know where the time has gone. Sure I had any-time-of-day sickness and back pain, but it really has been a great pregnancy compared to other women's stories. I wish I had something more in-depth to say this time around, but I am so happy right now and know everything will work out that I don't have much to write about. I just didn't want more time to go by without writing something. The last thing I have to say is that she is moving around a lot. It's a beautiful and surreal feeling her kicks and punches. I can't wait till they are strong enough for Cesar to feel them too. Yes, and she is a funny girl already. In her 20 week pic above she is kicking herself in the head :)

My pic: I am 5 months and 2 days

Pass the Salt N Peppa

18w 1 d

Yes, it's early to think of the collection of tracks that I will take to the hospital during labor. You know, music that is suppose to relax me while I am pushing out a human being into this world. 18 hours of music that is suppose to help me "focus" on my breathing and on the end task while strangers are looking at parts of me only Cesar has seen in the last 12 years, while they prod and poke and check me. Oh, that's what the music is for.

I do enjoy classical music, but I don't want music that will inspire me to drink wine and have a cigar. Give me something with a beat. Some music that will make me automatically move my hips and wiggle this baby out. I mean for those of you that have had the pleasure to see me dance you know that I love to dance. Mind you, I can't go as low on the Perculator as I did when I was 16 nor can I jump as high with the Roger Rabbit nor be on full speed with the Tracks, but I still like to shake what my mama gave me (and my 38 - well now 42 inch hips which have nothing to do with my mama)

So, I have complied a list of songs that I think will motivate me to sing (which sounds like yelling anyway), push, and accomplish bringing my baby into this world, who may come out dancing!

First Few Hours of Labor:

"Enjoy the Silence" Depeche Mode
"Hold on" Envogue
"Tonight's the Night" Redman
"Step by Step" NKOTB

Into the 10th - 15th Hours of Labor:

"Endless Night" Cynthia
"It's Bigger than Hip Hop" Dead Prez
"Bring Me to Life" Evanscence
"Adreneline Rush" Twista

Into the 18th and Final Stretch of Labor:

"I Will Survive" Gloria Gaynor
"Kick, Push" Lupe Fiasco

"Weak" SWV
"Hanging Tough" NKOTB

"Livin on a Prayer" Bon Jovi

The Final Push:

"Push It" Salt N Peppa

When we finally hold our baby:

"Here and Now" Luther Vandross
"Love of My Life" Erykah Badu
"The Right Stuff" NKOTB

(So, I couldn't find a pic of me dancing (thank God), so I added this one because I am craving chocolate cake. What?)