Tami Chynn: Fulfilling her true destiny

Garfene Grandison, Assistant Lifestyle Coordinator

Sitting on a picnic bench outside her upper St Andrew home, songstress Tami Chynn spoke candidly to Outlook about marriage, her bonus son and the one due in July.

No stranger to our lens, the only thing seemingly different about the 29-year-old Jamaican superstar was her protruding stomach. After all, she is 20 weeks pregnant.

"Pregnancy has been
amazing. Just like I had imagined, I love being pregnant. I'm enjoying
the magic of it happening. I decided that I had to do a few things
careerwise first, but it was always something that I wanted to do, so
right now I'm just really enjoying the process," she
gushed.

However, being pregnant isn't all about rays
of sunshine and butterflies, there are a few drawbacks. "There is the
initial sickness, but that's really it. It's a big change in your body,
but I'm looking at it as just an amazing experience. I could look at not
fitting into my clothes as a drawback, but instead I'm thinking, 'Wow,
this is very cool'," she noted.

There has been a very
usual change in her diet she explains after laughing hysterically. "I'm
eating less. It's a shame. No one could tell me that getting pregnant
would have me eating less. I reach my limit a lot more quickly now," she
explains. Chynn tells Outlook that at 20 weeks, she
figured she would have packed on about 18 pounds but, thankfully, has
gained only about eight. "I've passed the halfway mark and now is the
time that they say you gain 20 pounds per week, so I'm preparing for
that," she smiled nervously.

However, the mommy-to-be
has been having a few cravings to date. "My cravings have been changing,
but in the first stages, I wanted salads and now I am eating a lot more
pork and beef. But Wayne is not pleased and often laughs at me. But
he's been very cool about it."

As the interview
progressed, she had the sudden urge for a Goldie. Goldie? "Have you had
those? Oh God ... the Goldie from Honey Bun, I just can't explain it,"
she ended. How's that for a craving?

Her cravings are
not the only things that have changed. Her emotions, too, seem to be out
of sync. "My family says I'm a lot more 'peppery' and they say I have
no filter, although I think that's how I was before. Don't it?" she
asked. Was that a trick question? I gave a quick nod of approval before
those maternal hormones shifted her emotions into something far less
jovial, based on my answer.

She tells
Outlook that before being pregnant, she didn't buy
into the whole hormones theory, and thought that women used it as an
excuse to complain a little more.

"The other day Wayne
gave me a little joke and I couldn't stop laughing and, before you knew
it, I was cow bawling on the bed. He was the reassuring one saying
'Babes, don't worry. It's just hormones', and then I was sobbing,
telling him that I don't buy into that. Bounty commercials make me cry,
stupid things make me cry," she ended.

She told
Outlook she now has no control over her emotions,
because she cries even when watching American
Idol.

But according to Chynn, her family
life hasn't changed. "My family life hasn't really changed since I got
pregnant. All that has happened is, basically, I'm just preparing for
one more. I was in the swing of things from way before, especially since
I had my bonus boy," (referring to Wayne's first son, Giomar). She says
the only adjustment is explaining to Gio that he's going to have a
younger brother.

Speaking of her husband, she tells
Outlook Wayne has been amazing. She explains that
he's a very doting husband, especially since she became pregnant.
However, she does admit to pushing the envelope sometimes just to test
him. "It's really mean of me to push, but he's been going the extra mile
for me, so that's an incentive for me to be pregnant every year," she
said with a quick glance at her mother who has five
children.

She notes that being a dad is a role that
Wayne has totally mastered the art of. "I've never known Wayne outside
of being a father, and I often said that Gio is the reason I married
him, because I saw how he was as a father." She continued, "He would do
absolutely anything for his children. If music should stop working out
for him, he would have no issues wiping a windshield to provide for his
children, because it's honest work and that's the kind of man that I
love, because that was exactly how my father was."

A
strict disciplinarian who has no time for rude or ill-mannered children,
she confesses to Outlook that she would love to star
in the television sitcom, The Nanny. "I want to just
go to some parents and say, 'Listen, you have this children thing all
wrong'," she laughs. According to Chynn, being a mother was always one
of her lifelong goals ever since she was a little girl. "If I didn't
have Gio, I would have become a mother ages ago, but having him filled
that little void for me. I now feel like I'm fulfilling a big part of a
purpose," she stated.

"I'm enjoying the process right
now, because I know there's a point when I'm going to want this thing
out of me. I'm doing all the things I have the energy to do from now. My
only wish is that having a baby wasn't so expensive," she ends with a
laugh.

grandison.garfene@gleanerjm.com