Mother and child are doing well, and it's time to leave the hospital. So Papa comes and bundles us in the car and takes us home to present Stevie with his new brother.
Take him back. I wanted a sister.
But, honey, we can't do that. This is our baby and we have to keep him.
I don't care. I wanted a sister.
Okaaay! Well, now what? Optimistically, we decide he'll get used to it and finally accept a brother. Patience is the watchword.
I'm a nursing mom, so the crib is set up in our bedroom, but as it happens, this is one hungry baby, so he spent quite a bit of time in the big bed instead of his crib. Also, he has a problem of staying awake long enough to get full. Once the first hunger pangs are satisfied he goes to sleep. I'm nursing about every two hours. Yaaawwwwnnn!!
My aunt can't stay but just two or three days, so she hired a housekeeper to help out for a few weeks. This housekeeper, I'll call her Mrs. J., informed me from the outset that she was a housekeeper and she would not in any way help with the baby. That was fine with me, but I suspect some new moms might have tried to get her to relieve them of baby care for periods of time.
Anyway, she did say I had a lovely baby. She commented one day that he was wheezing. Having a bit of a hearing loss, I didn't hear it, but I did start paying attention to his breathing. When we went back for the 6-week checkup, the doctor did, indeed, confirm that Andrew had asthma. About the same time he developed colic.
Well, now, this being January, it wasn't exactly warm, and the houses weren't being built with central heat. Cooling, yes; heat, no. So I would sit in the rocking chair in front of the stove, the oven turned on, the baby face down across my lap, and I would try to soothe his colicky tummy. Or put him up on my shoulder and rub his back. I tried everything anyone suggested, but almost every night we were up; baby in distress, mom exhausted. If Mrs. J. hadn't been there during the day, I don't know how I would have managed.
The colic went on about three months, and finally relief. When it came time to wean Andrew, we discovered he was allergic to cow's milk, so I had to put him on soy milk. Ugh! The cow's milk aggravated his asthma, which wasn't real bad at that time, but why take chances? The reason I weaned him was a very practical one. He had a couple teeth by the time he was seven months old, and he BIT me!!
Andrew was now on a decent feeding schedule, so it was time to move him out of the parental bedroom. Stevie was not happy. He still hadn't accepted the new baby. He still insisted he wanted a sister. He grudgingly gave in, I think because he finally concluded it wasn't going to to him any good to argue any more.
Next: more about Mrs. J.