Like a time machine, but in a bad way.

Dear Baby,

I like to think I know a lot about how babies are made, how they are born, what happens to a woman's body as she is pregnant and gives birth. Your grandparents have a great many friends, and a few of them are midwives. As such, I happened to get an early education in the business of birthing babies. Let me tell you now, kid, it ain't for the faint of heart. All sorts of things go on that you never wanted to know about, but once you know, you can't un-know. If you don't belive me, I have one word for you: episiotomy. 'Nuff said.

I have a secret, though. Something none of them ever told me. Something not even my own doctor told me! Ready?

When you (and by "you", I mean me) stop taking birth control pills, something strange happens. Not just the "normal" strange - the mood swings, the irregular periods, the detritous of clearing the regular influx of hormones out of your blood stream... Some thing happens to your skin. When you stop taking birth control pills, your skin - especially the skin on your face - reverts to it's teenage state. This might sound, at first blush, like a good thing. Sadly, it is not. You don't revert to taught, firm, glowing skin. Oh no. You revert to acne. Yep. Acne. And lemme tell ya, kid, it ain't pretty. Plus, it's a bit awkward to be suddenly breaking out again at 33 years old. And as your grandmother once said, "getting pimples and wrinkles at the same time is just. Not. Fair." Never were truer words spoken.

I've been off birth control since June, waiting patiently for you. While we wait, I'd like to tell you a story about a kitty. A kitty named O. Before your Dad and I got married, your Dad had a roommate. This roommate decided he wanted a breakfast sandwich from Hardee's one morning and when he got to the drive-thru to order, discovered a kitten. (I won't even get into how a scruffy, hungry kitten could survive on his own for 3 months if he thought hiding in a drive-thru was a good idea...) He brought this kitten to school with him, and I fell in love. Now, at the time, I already had four cats I had adopted in college (before I met your Dad), and another kitten had wandered into my yard a year earlier. If you count on your fingers, you'll see that makes five cats in the house. I loved this new kitten, but I didn't know if I would be able to keep him. Your Dad and I discussed it at great length. Long story short, we kept him. We named him O and he was the biggest personality in the smallest package. Pretty soon his package matched his personality, though. We nicknamed him "Chumba Cat" and loved every extra pound.

O and the rest of the gang moved with us, twice. For almost four years he provided us all with laughter and love. We had our moments of frustration with him, to be sure. He was the spoiled baby of the family, after all, but he was always forgiven for his transgressions within seconds of transgressing. He was a kind of brown/gray tabby, with black stripes on his legs, and a black stripe down his back. He had a white belly.

You may be wondering why I'm telling you all of this.

The thing is, you'll never meet our sweet O. He slipped away from us very suddenly on New Year's Day. He was running around playing one minute, then he laid down and and was gone the next. No pain, no suffering, no horrible accident. He had a genetic heart defect as it turns out. Something that almost never shows symptoms and something we couldn't have fixed. His heart had a limited number of beats and he used them all up. We all miss him terribly. It's been almost four months now and I still cry about it all the time. I'm sure you'll hear stories about him later in life. He was a very special member of our family, and we loved him like crazy. Still do, in fact.

The main reason for this long story is that it, obliquely, relates to you, Baby. We gave O the very best life a kitty could have. We know he was happy and we know how happy he made us in return. But O gave us another gift, as it turns out, though it still doesn't feel like much of one. But that story will have to wait for another time...

I love you forever,
Mama