Baby Fever

Something just happens when you turn 27. Maybe it's biology, that darn ticking clock😒😓😖 Or maybe it's the fact that you were feeling so so lonely in your quest to start your own company. One that had purpose and was meaningful to you.

You see, you were deliberately keeping away from friends and family. You were feeling like they didn't get you....understand you....understand that you needed to go hard on it, because it just had the potential to save your life. 

They meant well (ok, most of them did) but their opinions were just noise to you at that point. 

So yeah, a girl was hella lonely. 

Is that a good reason to bring a child into the world? 

Hell no?! 

Did that tiny tiny fact make sense to you at that point in time? 

Again, Oh hell no!!!

But then again, you are just human. Feelings prevail, logistics be damned no!

And just like that, you start craving a mini you. 

All of a sudden, a pregnancy scare is not as scary as it had been just months before. Suddenly, when he asks,

 "Ulimeza P2 btw?" 

You realize you hadn't. And that ginormous elephantine realization doesn't make you drop on all knees, hands to the heavens, mouth full of regret and promises to The Allmigty.  It doesn't make you call on all your girlfriends, begging them to join you in fasting...begging them to call on all their gods, beseeching them (the gods) to let your period show.

"Aki sitarudia tena," you promise them (the gods....and your friends of course). 

Suddenly, the idea of being a mom seems a tad bit exciting, just a tad bit. You do take the P2, on the very last day they recommend, the 72nd hour, but you almost didn't. 

Joints nne ama P2?...choices choices,,, thank the heavens sanity prevailed. For the time being....

"What if you took it too late?" He asks. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Ah, kama mbaya mbaya," you retort. "Si tutamlea tu!" Cocky smile aside.

He smiles, nervously. He's slowly realizing that I might not be jocking. He's slowly realizing that I might be lying, that maybe, just maybe, I hadn't even taken the said P2. And that scares him to bits. But he doesn't wanna show it. He doesn't want me to see how freaked out he was. That wasn't his plan. Months earlier it might have been, would have been ideal kwanza. But not now, not when we were broken up, not when we had been broken up for months. He had moved on, had other plans that didn't involve me or a baby for that matter. That day had just been a slip up, a moment of weakness, an oops moment if I may, but a baby😮 My God! That was so not the plan!

He forgot that I knew him so well, I could read like a book!

"Usijali, I won't force you to be part of our lives....if it happens that is. Relax baba"

"Aki Dee wacha jokes," his hands are now visibly shaking. I swear I saw sweat trickle down his sideburns. He knew me, and he knew I could totally pull such a move if I wanted to. 

"We can't raise a baby like this."

That part warms up my heart. The 'we' part. He is the same same guy I fell for after all. He wouldn't abandon his spawn, deadbeat wasn't his nature. Up until then, he was the only guy I had ever envisioned building a family with. Well, despite his big head. His big headed babies would for sure tear up my coochie but his genes were a must have. He was the nicest kindest most generous soul I had ever met, and he loved me to bits, who wouldn't want babies with such a man? 

We had talked about it back when we dating...the number we wanted, their gender (Wenye Mungu tu atatupea he said) their names, at what point we wanted them and the values we would instill in them. Hapo sasa ndo we never saw eye to eye. He was a trad church guy, I was your resident party girl, msichana wa dunia. It's not like we wanted a kid at that exact point in time but you see, values....

We put that discussion on hold. When the time was right, the gods would show us what to do....

They rang (the gods). A meeting was convened, 

"Nyinyi mwachane tu!" they said, "y'all got no future!"

And because you can't go against the gods, lest y'all turn into bricks of salt, a break up was initiated.

We said our goodbyes, like the way only estranged lovers do, naked and between the sheets. How ironic right? That that's the exact thing that had gotten us in the kanandrum that we were in. We had broken up for a reason, ten times over might I add. So we agreed revisiting that chapter wasn't ideal. For both of us. Unless the seed had taken root. Then, we would open not just that particular chapter, but that entire book.

......

You go on with your life, chasing that elusive bag, it needed all your attention after all, treating it like your first born baby. One that didn't need a man in the picture. Boys, as you were learning, were a waste of time and your mental. Months go by and you forget that whole mess.  Then you hear through the grapevine aka mommy dearest that your brother had scored.

"Ndugu yako amepata jiko. Ulikua unajua?" 

"Naaah, not really." I might have heard of her but I didn't know he was serious, "uko na picha yake mom?"

"Sina, lakini ni kareefu...."

What is a sister to do when she hears that? Nikafunga virago on my way to visit my brother aka collect more moshene to feed my curiosity and of course, mommy dearest.  

Lahaula! Guess what a sister finds, the girl is with child, big as a cow, almost popping. Eiii, I was excited buana. So much so you'd have thought that I was the baby daddy. 'Finally, I'll get to raise a kid,' I thought. A practise baby before I get my own. Born of my blood, mtoto wetu. I was beyond.... the ache for my own offspring dwindled a little bit, my nephew would hold that space for the time being.

She goes home in wait of the delivery date.  That was around October- November 2023. I follow suit coz that's what good sisters-in-law do. I was still preping my digital and social media marketing company, Becca Digital, in readiness for launch the coming year so there was no need for my presence in Nairobi, I could do it all online, location independence is what I was going for after all...(na kuhepa rent pia, told my landlord to pack up my stuff, put them all in storage, till I was ready to get back to the cirry)....and off to Kitale I went. 

We waited for the little bugger with bated breaths. Days went by so slowly. 

The due date came but nothing. 

A week after, still nothing. 

Another week goes by and then we started getting worried. She's told if he doesn't make his entrance by the coming week, an induction would be necessary.  

The induction was necessary. At 6.30 pm on a rather chill November day,  we welcomed a bouncing 3.2 kg baby boy. I was in the delivery room, I saw it all. Traumatic as it was, his first cry made my heart melt. I was the first one to hold him. I fell in love with him right there and then.

'Ah two hours of labour doesn't seem that bad,' I thought. 

Delivery was hella bloody but I could handle it. 

When my finances are right, I might just give this motherhood thing a shot. 

And just like that, my mind was made up! 

****

Here's the thing about mandugu toka nitoke, raised together, by a single mom, and it was just the two of them, when one has a kid, the other thinks that that's her kid too. She thinks that she'll fawn over him, change his daipers, soothe him to sleep,...the likes. Like be fully immersed in his life, his upbringing, even chyme in when it was time for the big big decisions like 'atabatizwa wapi'...kumbe all that is all in her head. Kumbe that kido has a mother of his own, and the mother had opinions, her own ways of doing things...he is her baby, she's gonna raise him, he'll get to wear what she decides, get to be held by who she deems fit na hakuna mtu atasema ng'wee. 

You went home to experience first hand what it was like to be a new mom, but you find yourself turned into the resident mboch. Ooops sorry, resident house manager. And that, that is so not what you signed up for, you had positioned yourself as the lazy sibling for a good good reason, you hate house chores helllooooo!!!!

Kufua mang'ua, kuosha vyombo, cleaning and maintaining the house doesn't didn't well with you, not when you hardly ever held the baby. Like you got it, she was a first time mom and hella antsy about letting people close to her baby. Let alone the lazy, care-free-life-of-the-party, always-finds-an-excuse-not-to-do-anything-in-the-house lastborn aunty. Not even your own mum trusted that you could handle a new-born baby. To be honest, I didn't trust myself either, but how could they know if they didn't let you try no?

If you have siblings, and y'all are close, then you'd get this. When one of you gets something that the other doesn't have, the one who doesn't have it wants it. And she wants it badly. Even more now than ever before. 

Again, two hours of labour was nothing!

They had sold us this idea that it takes hours and hurts like a motherfucker but that hadn't been the case for my sister-in-law, it wouldn't be the case for me either! (The gods were laughing, laughing so hard that they were falling off their pristine golden thrones,.... 'aka kajui, wacha tu tutakaonyesha')

****

With my mind already made up (forget that I was still broke as hell and running a struggling start-up) I set out to find a suitable baby daddy. Good face, good brains, financially ok type of stud. I was still single, didn't necessarily want a relationship, didn't even need him to be in our lives for that matter, but it would have been nice if he was, a co-parenting sort of affair, si my parents had done it? And look how well I turned out😎....The thought that the guy I would approach would give me a no wasn't even a concern of mine, I don't get nos...what are those even😕

My mind started running, opening and closing the folders of all the guys in my life, friends, exes, you name it. The ones that your friends were like, 

"Aki Dee, uyu kijana si anakupenda, misijui mbona you are not giving him a shot." 

You think of them harder, you playfully sneak that idea into your conversations but niggas can't read between the lines. Or maybe they did, but they thought I was crazy. 

"Yani hujaniongelesha for months, I tried for years ukaniweka friend zone, sahii ati ndo unataka mbegu yangu!? Bitch gerrarrahere!!!" 

They never said it to my face, could never say it to my face but I think that's what they would have said if they could have said it. And by 'they' I mean two of them, this sounds like I had a list of them a mile long hehe. Only two folders made it to the final shortlist😌. 

Now, around this time, I had posted a pic. Of my nephew and I. He was like two three four weeks old. Among the many comments I got, most of which went like,

"Gai, kumbe you have a kid, ndo maana umetupotelea ivo?" 

Like a girl stepping out of the spotlight could only mean that she's pregos😒...ok ok, most of the time it does but yoh, a girl was building her brand, kuwekelea foundations hapa kule helloooo.....

Of them all, one comment stood out. It was from a guy I used to know way back. We had grown up together. He used to be my next door neighbour. At some point his mom and my mom shukud that we had a thing but we were just vibing, he was good company, nothing came out of it. He was in uni, I was in highschool, sasa ata in my head mimi sikuwa hapo kabisaaa.....mambo ya watu wakubwa bado mimi sikuwa nimeanza....

"That's Kemboi's baby?" He asked.

"Yeah, my little nephew."

"Y'all look good. When it's your turn you'll make a great mom."

That got to me, stuck with me. All this while, I had never stopped to think about the type of mother I would be. There was no question about it really. I have a great mom. A phenominal mother. Of course I'd be just as good. She loves me to bits, and I'd love my baby to bits too. The logistics hapo katikati were persona non grata, bora there's love there, the rest would just work itself out.

But lets put a pin on that part for a while, just a little while. 

......

We all have that one guy that we are like, 

"Si when we turn 30 and we are not like married married or even have prospects of the people we'd take home to meet the folks, si we'll get a baby?"

No?

It's just me?

Lies, it can't be just me...

Anywho, in my case, I had three. The main one, then the back up, afu back up wa back up for good measure. Hii dunia ina mambo zake nani, a girl had to make sure she was sorted just in case something happened. (Of course each of them thought they were the only one, I'm not mad haiya!)

Turns out I had been right for having three because the main one, at the point with which I was having my baby fever, already had a kid of his own, and didn't want another, not at the time, maybe even never again. 

"Hizi drama Dee nimepitia with my baby mama, I am so not looking forward to another, uyu ata anaeza kuwa wa mwisho!" He said.

So he was out, now to his back up, and it just happened that we were talking at that particular period. With him, I just said it, straight up, on a phone call.

Me: Let's make a baby...

Him: Hahaha, Dee are you serious?

Me: Yeah, I want a baby, and I read somewhere that the best person to have babies with is your friend. You are single, I am single....I mean why not?

He said yes straight up. (told you I don't get nos...I'm good, naah scratch that, I'm great genes😎) I also think he was a lil bit buzzed at the time. 

He asked me to get over to his, fare ikatumwa and home I left.

He had a big house in Ruiru. It used to be a family home akawachiwa. A four bedroom bungalow that he shared with his friend who just happened to be dating his cousin. I had been there once before, for about a week. Met the whole bunch of his relas and honestly, it was a vibe. They were all rooting for us to date but at that point, nursing a heartbreak of my own , tuseme tu sikuwa hapo.

Ok, fine, I'll admit it, although we were friends, just friends, he'd always wanted to be more than that. You see, we met in rehab. Yeap I see it too, total red flag, on both our ends and I was acutely aware of that tiny tiny fact. He was in for alcohol, cigs and miraa addiction....I was in for marijuana and my mental, bipolar disorder, or so my psychiatrist said. Not the best of matches, I totaly get that, but who else to actually have a child with than the person who understood your darkest deepest demons huh? I understood well that parenting a child was a life long committment, but I wasn't looking for a relationship, I wasn't ready for one and even if I had been, it would have taken me years to actually find him, another year to get to know him well enough to want to spend my life with him, so why not go for the devil you know, ci? Plus we were doing better, or so I thought, guess I spoke too soon.

I had never seen addiction at the height with which I saw it that couple of days I spent over at....hmmmm...let's call him Ben, those couple of days I spent over at Ben's. Relapse is part of recovery, they told us. It is totally expected, that's why we were given ways of trying to avoid it back at the rehab centre. Well, both of us had relapsed but in my case, I could actually say that I wasn't that bad. You can call me a functioning addict, like most pot users are. And honestly, most of the youngins in Nairobi...my friends, collegues, the likes....are functioning addicts to some degree. They drink daily, sipping sipping while working but dare you call that addiction. Anyway, this story isn't about that. It's relevance comes in where when I got there, he won 900Gs betting. Yes Florence, 900 thousand Kenyan Shillings. That's technically 1m dearest reader. (yeah yeah yeah, you see it too no? Your girl here be a charm, the lucky kind😊)

But guess what, all of that was gone, done, kaput, by the end of that week. Sema kupiga sherehe nani...boti after boti nini nini....maheny, ma JD, wewe sema unataka nini you'd get it. Ollathat, plus eating out, deliveries, and his fourth addiction, betting, ganji yote ikaenda tu ivo...

I wanted to tell him to slow down, wanted to ask him to put most of it aside for his struggling biashara, wanted to ask him to give me like ata 50Gs as an investment in my own company but you learn quick that pesa ya mtu ni ya mtu, si yako, if he wanted advice he would have asked for it. 

Anyway, we had agreed to chill abit before the monumental act, talk things out, see if we were on the same page about raising a kid, the expectations we both had on the other party. Vitu muhimu muhimu kama izo and between all the drinking, the parties and the blacking out, we hadn't gotten to that part just yet. We, ok fine, I, was used to him as just a friend, a good one, but just a friend nonetheless. I needed time to start seeing him as a sexual being. 

And you know what? What I witnessed there, addiction aside, financial mismanagement, the rage, the gambling...I was like naaah, I am soo not bringing my baby into this.....that whole baby making idea was cancelled and a girl left...

Where to now when the guy who got her from home now didn't want her there anymore? You more of feel it than he ask you to get out but you know what, akufukuzaye hakuambii toka nani, and I am so not the girl to be told wewe kwera....packed my bags and left. (ok, there was a lot that transpired within that week, the type that entails an ex showing up, vyombo and electronics kuvunjwa, majirani complaining, broken hearts and bruised egos....bribe me kidogo hapo kwa comments afu maybe, just maybe I might tell y'all all abaurit)

Here in comes back up wa back up. I needed a place to crash seeing as the guy who had gotten me away from home, promising a roof over my head for as long as I needed was, well, not acting like he meant it. It's not like I was even thinking about a baby at this point, I figured ata mimi I wasn't in the best of places mentally to be making such a huge life changing decision, especially one that involved someone else's life. I just needed somewhere safe to lay my head until I figured my next move. One of the casualties of the fracas that we caused back in Ruiru was my precious lapi, my one, my dearest machine, without whom, my ability to make kidogo kidogo cash was cut off. Yes, going back home was an option but that would have been an easy way out, I wasn't taking the easy way out. I had to figure this shit out on my own!

Back up wa back up was nice....well....until he wasn't. Funny how people would call you over, beg you to stay even longer when you're just visiting. When you have your own money and a place of your own. But when shit hits the roof, and you actually need said treatment and accommodation, you suddenly become a bother. A couple of days in, you feel the energy shift...

Eish, lessons my G, lessons that I will never forget....from his you move to a single room in the shantiest parts of Kikuyu because you promise yourself you'll never put yourself under someone else's mercy, never again. It was a shit place but it was your place, rebuilding from scratch had never scared you. 

You give someone the power to feed you, you also give them the power to starve you nanii...and make you feel like shit about it. I got to experience that first hand. Never again ptooo!!!!....

But anyway, again, this story is not about that, that will come in in a series called PEOPLE, that is on the works, keep it locked right here sawa. 

So, back up wa back up didn't know that I had major baby fever. Even though I had pinned that whole idea, si he was still a prospect, when I got back up on my feet that is. Sasa I was looking at him with a different eye. Not like a friend but like my potential baby daddy. Oh he failed, he failed miserably. It was his constant complaining, his never taking accountability for where his life was, his lack of ambition in life, his poor financial decisions and how easy it was for him to be swayed by other people's opinions of him and his life....naah, this one can't fight for himself let alone a tiny tiny human being of his own....nigga was cancelled!

Stayed there for about a week, again, it's not like he threw me out but you feel the vibe, the air changes....with him though, it mostly had to do with the fact that he wanted me and I, well, didn't. Izi pretty girl problems aki😖 

Mimi I wanted to use his computer, make something small and get out of there never looking back...the power dynamics had shifted. He was helping me out, and he expected something else in return, my heart on a silver platter. He didn't realize that finally, in all the years that he had pretended to be my friend, he had shown his hand.

When I left, nilijichuna kidogo...baby girl, you've been hanging out with the wrong wrong rende!

Months went by, I was finally getting my shit together albeit with a lot of struggle in my tiny tiny single room. Baby girl was finally just about to officially launch her marketing agency Becca Digital and she was so so proud of herself, that was one huge milestone sindio? 

But the butterflies were there, in her tummy, heck, felt more like the whole damn zoo really. Anxiety eating her up every waking hour. So what does a girl do when a certain tall, full-bearded childhood friend with serious looking eyes and a love for literature from West Pokot county tells her, 

"Si you come over, we're on mid-term break (he's a teacher) and I have a whole week of doing nothing, imma help you out, however and wherever you need me to😉"

"Are you sure? That I won't be too much of an inconvenience...."

"Dee, you'll never be an inconvinience, not to me....seeing you win, is my win,,,"

At this point, I knew fully well that even with it's official launch, Becca Digital would take months to generate actual returns, those that I could actually enjoy. So my plan was to go back home, to my mom's, back in Kitale. At home, I wouldn't have to worry about sijui rent, sijui food, the basics right? I would be able to fully give it my all. All of my time, my energy and return whatever it made back into it, until it could stand on its own at least. Good business moves no? 

And anyway, Nairobi wasn't doing it for me anymore, if the type of friends that I kept was any indication. My mind was on building myself and my money, there's was on competing with each other and the high life...two parallels....

Why not pass by this tall, full-bearded childhood friend with serious eyes for that week before checking in with my mom? I could really use the help, ata kama it came in form of "You're doing great mamaa, keep at it and a pat on the back"....and anyway, si kwake ni izo sides za kwetu? Two birds....

'Tuma fare, nakuja.'

And a girl never left🙈😜👪!

......

When did your baby fever hit you? If ever......Did it come with a bang like mine did?