Two under two

A redheaded boy and an Asian girl... sound familiar?

Remember when we had the W and Baby O?  Remember how hard I said having two kids was?  

Yeah, well apparently I didn't remember.

Having a newborn and a 17-month-old was a LOT of work.  Sleep?  What's that?  Clean laundry?  A thing of the past! 

So here I was with 17-month-old Joshua and a newborn.  Like a three day old newborn-newborn.  And she was TINY.  Tiernen was 9 lbs 3 1/2 oz and she was early!  This baby was about 5 1/2 lbs.  I’ve never seen a baby that was too small for newborn diapers or clothes, but this one was.

I knew that Baby N was short term.  Without a doubt, she was going back home to mom, even though it was a less-than-ideal situation.  Mom still has NO PLANS for who was going to watch the baby when she went back to school.  Her court-appointed attorney advised her to take each and every class at CareNet.  CareNet is a great resource that allows expecting and new moms to take classes and in return, they earn coupons that they can use to shop at CareNet’s store to everything from car seats to baby clothes.  I applaud it.

My only issue is that says it offers “abortion counseling” which is a nice way of saying “we will counsel you out of having an abortion.”  And I don’t like that.  Some women are NOT prepared to be mothers (ahem, this student) and some women don’t want to be mothers and some women just shouldn’t be mothers.  Abortion isn’t even talked about anymore.  I think that is sad.

Anyway, mom/student took the “classes” which, as she reported, was just watching videos.  Um.  Ok.  I also offered to allow her to come over and SLEEP over every day so she could learn how to take care of her baby.  She slept over twice, both times she left at 5 am saying she wanted to go home because she was up all night -‘d was tired.

Again, um.  Welcome to my life.  Between Baby N and Joshua, I was averaging 2 hours of sleep a night.  I was burned out.  Tiernen has both kids all day while Darryl and I were at work, plus she was attending grad school at night.  We were all crispy about the edges.  I would come home at lunch so Tiernen could shower and eat.  That meant that at lunch, I did not eat.  I was so tired and grumpy and miserable.

I was blessed with a pretty gnarly schedule that year and was done teaching my core classes by 11.  I had one 38 minute lab in the afternoon.  I called HR and asked if I could go on “foster maternity leave” which is actually a real thing.  I said I didn’t want my fostering to affect my students so I would still teach my core classes and take half days.  

I was told no.  

I asked if I could use sick time.

HR said I wasn’t sick and neither was the baby, so no.

I tried to explain it like this:  you know those shows “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”?  Well, I didn’t know I was getting an infant.  And, technically, it’s to

help a student, so shouldn’t I get double credit?

Nope.

After working all day, mom/student would be over my house with her homebound tutor so she could see the baby and learn at the same time.  It became obvious that mom/student wasn’t just an English language learner; she was clearly learning disabled.  She could not differentiate between a tank and a treaty (and it was matching with pictures.)

I was never so worried about a baby going home.

At the same time, I felt that Joshua was not getting the attention he deserved.  He was not even a toddler yet!  Out of utter desperation, I called to see if they had any openings at the Neighborhood Center and glory to God, come February, when Baby N was 7 weeks old and Joshua was 18 months old, they could start daycare, but only for the hours I was working.  Tiernen, at least, would get some sleep.

It was a very, very difficult three months.

Baby N grew quickly and was starting to smile when Utica Family Court decided that all her CareNet classes qualified her as a competent parent.  Mom/student had never been unsupervised with the baby, not even for a minute.

The Agency picked Baby N up from daycare and we didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.

I never saw her again.