CocoaMama,CocoaBaby

> Originally published on:wherearethedemigods.tumblr.com <

     *** Some editing has occurred to fit the style of CMCB ***

1. I am not a hero or a villain. I am not a victim or a martyr. I am a human being who made choices and is now living with them. If you’re going to judge anything, then judge that.

2. If you disregard my first statement and decide to judge me, realize I DON’T CARE.

Now that you know….

How did I become a single mother?

A liter of Ciroc and a fifth of Patron.

Ok, I’ll rephrase. I became a single mother through a series of decisions. I wrote a story about it. Wanna hear it? Here it go. It was Howard University Graduation Season of 2010. I was with what I considered to be my best friend of six years and we were engaging in the revelry and general spirit of foolery that always surrounds that time of year. There were lots of drinks, lots of laughs, lots of sex and no condoms. I think that we pretty much got it in over the greater DMV area that whole week. Fast forward three weeks later and I’m back home in Ohio where my mother remarks that I’m taking an awful lot of naps. We both chalk it up to the fact that when I’m in DC, I live like Pam from True Blood. In the back of my mind, there was a little screen doing a replay of all the activities that I had engaged in during graduation week, but I rarely use that part of my brain anyways, so I paid it no mind.

I arrived back in DC and realized I hadn’t had my period. My cycle has always been a bit irregular, so I didn’t immediately trip. BFF and I had a scare just 3 months prior that caused me to switch to what I thought was a more secure form of birth control so that we wouldn’t end up explaining some unexplainable things to folks we didn’t want to explain them to. Still, I decided to take the pregnancy test because it’s better to be sure than unsure. I remember THAT day very vividly. I woke up that morning and trekked across the hall to do my do. I followed the instructions, waited the proscribed two minutes and checked the results. One line. I knew what one line meant, so I washed my hands and proceeded to go have a celebratory shot of Ciroc with my breakfast as I was getting ready to dispose of the test, my mother called and I forgot about it and went to listen to all the ways I needed to get my life together…at 7 in the morning. About an hour or so later, I headed back into the bathroom and noticed the test still sitting on the edge of the laundry basket. I picked it up to throw it away and noticed that something was off. Where before there had been only one line in one window, there was now one line and another very faint line in the second window. I figured it was just a chemical reaction from sitting out. I had watched enough shows on TLC to know that pregnancy hormones double every 48 hours, so I knew that I should wait two days to retest.

You dumb as hell if you think I waited two days. Pregnancy tests come at least two to a pack. I took the other test that day. This time, I got two lines in less than two minutes. Over the next two days, I took four more tests, just in case the first two were from a faulty batch. They weren’t.

I was knocked up.

I didn’t quite panic. I took another nap. Then woke up and tried to figure out what my next move would be. I knew I needed to tell BFF, but I wasn’t quite sure what to say to him. Let me take this time to say that BFF and I had discussed the children issue previously. We had been friends for six years, included benefits for five years and even though he and I were not in a relationship, we had still talked about it, just in case. I knew up front that he did want kids, but did not want them at that particular moment in his life. I felt the same way – Up until I got pregnant. It wasn’t like lightening flashed, my uterus became inhabited and I suddenly changed my philosophies on life, but I was unsure about a definite course of action especially since it involved a life.

I waited a week, just to get my head together and try to figure out my feelings and then I told the BFF. He didn’t yell or do anything truly douchey. We were in the middle of an argument when I gave him the news and he said ok like he’d already known and then asked if I wanted to go eat dinner. Of course the next day he said that I should consider getting an abortion. I told him that he would need to pay for it. He agreed. We had that conversation or a variation of that conversation for approximately 2 months. It wasn’t that I was dead set on having the baby, but I was REALLY scared of having the abortion. What if I could never have any more children? What if the procedure haunted me forever and I had dead babies visiting me nightly? Why not explore adoption? It finally came down to us having an argument at work one day that turned extremely physical. Once the dust had settled, I decided to have the procedure scheduled for the next possible day because I refused to have a child with someone who could put hands on me. When we parted ways that night, he gave me his bank card so that I could pay for the procedure. Some voice told me to check the balance before I went to the clinic.

There wasn’t enough money in the account to cover the abortion.

I was livid.

After finally resolving to have the abortion done, I now had yet another hurdle to cross to make that happen and I let him know in very explicit details exactly what kind of man I thought he was at that point. After a whole lot of yelling, and some very angry bbms and jammed thumbs, he told me he’d deposit the cash in my account as soon as the bank opened since I didn’t want him to accompany me to the appointment by that point. I called a close female friend of mine to drive me to the center the morning of the abortion.

I got there and the place wasn’t like I expected. It looked like a regular office with a LOT of Mexican women in the waiting room. I filled out the forms and waited to be called into the room to get checked out. While waiting, my friend and I were talking, debating the moral complexities of the situation, as educated Negroes do in tough situations. I had doubts, but I figured I was about to do what was in everyone’s best interest. Finally, after forever, my name was called. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but when I had been poked, prodded and ultrasounded, it was determined that I was 16 weeks pregnant. The center stopped performing abortions at 15 weeks.

I walked out of the room in a daze, told my friend what had happened and got into the car. The clinic had given me a referral to a place that did abortions up to 24 weeks, so it wasn’t as if I was being forced to carry the baby, but I needed to call BFF and let him know what the deal was. I dialed his number and he answered the phone by telling me that he still hadn’t deposited the money in my account, but that he was on his way to do so. I told him to forget about the deposit.

The ensuing months were filled with just about every Vh1-ish, Bravo and Lifetime ass, Oxygen network type of bullshit you can imagine. After the aborted abortion, I was still considering adoption. I hadn’t told my parents. I was still trying to figure out if I needed prenatal care even if I was going to give the baby up for adoption. I was working 2 jobs, singing backup in a band and trying to figure out where the hell my life was headed and if I was going to be alive by the time I figured all of that. BFF and I got into several further altercations. I had to go to homecoming…sober.

It was a horrible period in my life. At seven months, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to tell my parents. Not only did I get tired of keeping it a secret, I wanted to go home for thanksgiving and I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I’d told them I was just really bloated. My dad laughed and said he hoped it was a boy and my mother said she’d known because she’d had a dream. Crazy juju lady. I think that was the point that I decided I was going to keep the baby. Up until that point, I had been gung ho about the idea of adoption because I thought I would be able to pull a 16 & pregnant and be back at the school dance as soon as I popped out the kid. Once I found out my parents weren’t going to disown me, I was more open to the idea of being a mom. BFF wasn’t happy, but he didn’t seem to be unhappy which is a big difference. He would call to make sure I was eating. He started suggesting names. Started making plans for the delivery and to take the baby home to see his family. He drove me home for the holidays and even faced my parents.

The only thing he didn’t do was tell his girlfriend.

Girl had been around for a while. However, he didn’t deign to tell me that they were “in a serious, committed relationship” until I was about 7 – 8 months pregnant. I don’t generally make it a habit to indulge with other folks boyfriends. That’s how you catch rabies and jail time.

I mentioned that I thought he should tell her he was about to have a child, but since I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be committed to that girl, I left it alone. Fast forward to my birthday 2011 and I received the Best. Gift. EVER! A zebra print snuggie….and a beautiful baby girl. After all the talk and debate and negotiations, BFF didn’t deliver on any of his promises. He showed up at the hospital for 15 minutes to see her. Since then he’s seen his first born child maybe 5 times, with the last time being when she was 6 months old. She’ll turn one in 3 weeks. I think the moment he walked out of the hospital was the moment that I started to realize I would have to do everything on my own. If not then, it could have been when he missed her dedication. Or possibly when I had to call his parents and tell them that they had a granddaughter when she was seven months old. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was when he decided to have a baby with his girlfriend to apologize for having a baby with me.

I knew for sure that I was a single mother when I decided that I wasn’t going to let him or anyone for that matter, dictate what I did with my body and subsequently, my child.

It has not and will not be easy.  I won’t lie and say that there aren’t moments when I wish that I didn’t have this life. I’ve had to do things I NEVER thought I would do and give up things near and dear to me in order to provide for my child. I was forced to move back to Ohio from DC. My job is cool and I can work from wherever but it sucks being somewhere I don’t want to be. 

I haven’t bought a pair of Jordans in a year. A WHOLE DAMN CALENDAR YEAR! And my liver is out here surviving. I think Ciroc has had to lay off people because of me.

If I could go back and do things differently, I would. Not that I regret my daughter, but I do regret the circumstances of her birth and I do regret the lot that I’ve given her in life. I had dreams for my child and I wanted her to start from a better position. I believe that every girl should be a daddy’s girl and it kills me that she won’t ever be, that she has a sister she’ll never know and whole side of the family who will view her as a burden or a mistake. I’m not whining about the situation. I realize that this shit happens everyday, B.

More importantly, I’ve also realized that for everything I’ve lost, my daughter has given me more. I’ve learned so many lessons because of her. I’ve learned that no matter how long you’ve known a person and how well you think you know them, you never really do. I’ve learned to read actions instead of words. I’ve learned that I’m stronger than I think I am; mentally and physically. I’ve learned that I’m way more resourceful than I think I am. All those stories about mothers making five course meals out of spam and noodles? I make frigging buffets…without the spam. I’ve learned that girl babies can also pee in your face if you leave the diapers off too long and that kids her age are…bouncy. (Thank God)

I’ve learned that it really does take a village and the villagers are not always who you think they should be or expect them to be. My mother has told me several times that she thinks my daughter was given for the sole purpose of slowing my lifestyle and that she probably saved me from “liver disease or a nasty crack habit.” I didn’t become a single mother when BFF chose to walk away from my daughter. I became a single mother when I WANTED to be responsible and care for a human being more than I wanted to walk away and remain the same person that I’d been before her. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see if I still have that same desire when she’s a teenager….

(Oh and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH MIRENA!!) (no edits here, it’s too funny)

~ Jephree (@PhlyyPhree) 

Cocoa Mama, Cocoa Baby is a mommy and me support and playgroup. I started this group in my living room with a few of my friends who like myself were young first time mothers. Our first meeting was held in October 2009, it has since fallen off a little but in 2012 I plan to get back into the swing of things with the other mamas and babies. 

The purpose of CMCB is to allow mothers to gather monthly to share their experiences, offer advice, relax and talk, trade toys/clothes/baby items, and of course allow our children to play and build friendships. 

My mind is always busy and so I am always thinking of new things to do. Enter the birth of this blog. By profession, I SHOULD be a journalist, at least that’s what my Sallie Mae debt for Howard University would have you to believe. I decided to start this blog, (I now have three in total) to highlight some of those mother and child experiences that I have, that you have, that we have. It is my desire to include posts from the ladies of Cocoa Mama, Cocoa Baby and of course as I come across content on tumblr that fits, I’ll reblog.

Enjoy :)