My sisters and I treated the whole idea of another baby in the house as a joke. The baby’s name was to be Lola and this to us was extremely funny. For days we walked around singing the classic Barry Manilow song Copacabana. Obviously Dad had no say in that, secondly, we just had no more room in our house. Yes, it’s the biggest one in the neighborhood, but when you have two parents, six kids and a baby on the way, that really doesn’t make a huge difference. I was personally excited to have another baby around; I even hoped that I would get home in time from the LIYO tour for the birth. I didn’t understand why my sisters were so annoyed to hear about the baby.
I had a lot of time to think while I was away and I knew, deep down, that this baby was going to change my life, and well, it seemed like it wasn’t going to be in a good way. My father would no longer see me as his baby girl. There was a new daddy’s little girl on the way. The funny thing about this is that I didn’t figure out what that sinking feeling meant until, after I got home from my six week summer trip. I saw how spoiled this unborn angel already was, with at least 20 pairs of designer socks. Socks. I kept asking myself why it had to be a girl. I was going to loose my daddy and well that just wasn’t something I was ready for.
The day my stepmother went into labor was one of the most stressful days of my life. My two older sisters were at the beach with our mom, (I had chosen not to go because I had gotten home from my trip just a week earlier.) When I got home from work that day, I was told that Jess was having contractions, but they’re not serious yet. I went to be at 11 o’clock that night, not realizing I would be woken at one am to my dad telling me I had to get up with my two little brothers in the morning, get them dressed and fed, and ready to be picked up to go see Lola. I can’t say that I wasn’t excited for the new baby, but it my emotions were very mixed up. Either this baby was going to just make my life more chaotic and loud but overall happy, or she was going to make is so my family was completely divided based on mother. I was anxious and scared to see what the outcome would be.
On August 13th, Jack, the one year old, decided to wake up at five thirty in the morning. I was running on a five hours of sleep and I had to get him changed, fed, dressed, and play with him until Guy, the 4 year old, woke. The process restarted as I dressed and fed Guy just as I did with Jack. Finally, after was seemed like three days, my grandmother got to the house, an hour later than expected. Meanwhile, I had showered, eaten and gotten ready to go see my new sister all with two energetic boys in tow. I have probably never felt so on top of the world and exhausted, all at the same time.
After my grandmother and I got the boys dropped off (with a very tearful goodbye) at the babysitter’s, it was finally time to see the little baby that was going to rock my world. When we got to the hospital, we tiptoed into the room with big grins, only to find that Lola was in the nursery getting her measurements done. I was so anxious, I was literally pacing around. As soon as the nurses brought her in, every single negative thought I ever had about that baby was gone.
She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
