"Getting older's not been on my plans"

  Me: "So, we can't use condoms."   Bee: "Okay."   Me: "And, I don't do birth control."   Bee: "Ookaayy..."   Me: "So, I would imagine that me being so regular in my cycle that we are going to get pregnant pretty quickly."   Bee: "Gotcha..."   Me: "Oh, and no sex until we are married."   Almost 5 and a half years ago, a conversation very similar to this took place between me and white boy. I felt it important to lay down everything I wanted, needed, and expected in a relationship due to the fact that I was done chasing and giving in to men. I figured if he stuck around then there was something worth pursuing.    With conversations like this, he never flinched. Not once. I think he might have been skeptical at times, perhaps to see if I would relinquish my, "You have to come to Mass with me. There is no choice, and our children will be raised Catholic," harsh expectations. But once I realized he wasn

   It fell off sometime around the middle or maybe it was the end of week 2...the shriveled up remnant of the tie between my unborn child and me. I kind of always thought it would be a momentous event: "Call the papers! Call the masses! Owen's umbilical cord fell off." But, it was a quiet moment. Sometime around 230 in the morning. It was just me, and I thought, "Huh, so this is how it happens." I open his onesie to change him and there it sits on his belly...no longer attached. I saved it in a little box so white boy could see it in the morning.    I was told by more than several people that once Owen was born it would all be worth it. That all the pain all the madness that came with labor and birth would all float away when he was placed on my chest. Well, I didn't get that. I didn't get the first moments to hold him to see if I could feel the ebb of pain and turmoil as they left my body. It wasn't for least 45 minutes, as I laid there to get stitc