Boomerang

Between the time we had gone to the hospital to have our first baby and the time we were ready to leave, my husband and his sister had moved us out of our apartment and into my parents’ basement.  (Sigh) I suppose this was our first of several very pride-swallowing experiences.  With me out on maternity leave and my husband being laid off, we had little choice in the matter and were grateful to have a roof over our heads.  We were also motivated to get our selves together and be out on our own again, into our own place.

And so, we brought our beautiful baby girl “home”.  We developed, what we thought, was a clever nighttime routine.  When Maggie cried, Daddy got up, changed her, and brought her to me in bed.  I would, then, nurse her, burp her, and put her back in her bassinet.  OR, baby and I would fall asleep, and we would all wake up soaking wet in the morning.  Eew.  Of course, our “made to order” baby slept through the night by the time she was ten days old.  We usually woke up soaking wet anyway, because lactating continued on schedule.  My husband joked, “Nothing like a big kersplash in the middle of the night! Pretty soon, we started taking a pack of Oreos to bed with us!”  I know, but it’s really funny!

Thankfully, the mister went back to work, took on a second job fixing lawn mowers for a hardware store, and we soon had enough money for our own one bedroom apartment.  With the aid of food stamps and WIC, we fed ourselves and our new baby.  I went back to work when Maggie was six weeks old.  With two grandmas more than happy to spend time with our angel, babysitting wasn’t a problem.

Sharing a room with our infant felt a little creepy, and then she started rolling over, and then she started peeking through the slats of the crib and shouting gibberish to us at random times.  It was time for little miss “peek-a-boo” to get her own room.  SO, a little while after our first wedding anniversary, we moved for the fifth time.  The new digs were six blocks from his parents, three block from my parents, and two blocks from both my grandmother and my sister’s little family (they lived in the same building).  Enmeshed doesn’t begin to explain the familial issues.

We decided that it would be better financially for me to stay home and babysit for my cousin’s two boys.  We spent time with family and often entertained friends on the weekends.  I was content to be keeper of home and hearth.  Living every nineteen-year-old’s dream.  We decided that this was the perfect time to expand our family, and baby number two was on the way.  Just kidding. I was drunk and ovulating.  There was a drawer full of birth control right beside our water-bed, which we rarely bothered with. We were in the middle of a fight.  And, THAT is how baby number two came in to being.  Truth.