Her birth went very smoothly, and she came out perfect despite the fact that the Queen had no idea she was pregnant until she was eight months along. A lot of people don't believe this, but you have to remember that she was working to lose weight while she was pregnant and first children tend to be a bit more compact than their subsequent siblings. So the worst experience during this time was frustration over not being able to lose the weight she wanted to ... guess we know what was going on with that now. Now when the baby came out, that's when the fruit of her labors truly showed through, and she dropped down to a size she hadn't been in since high school.
Of course, since we hadn't planned on this little surprise when we'd gotten the apartment, we had to figure out where to put a baby in a one bedroom apartment large enough for newlyweds, but that's about it. We are very, very fortunate to have the support structure we have, since the Queen's parents were kind enough to help us out with baby furniture, but where to put it? I don't know if you have ever seen the size of the bedroom in a one bedroom apartment, but I can tell you there's just enough room at the foot of a queen sized bed to fit a crib sideways between it and the wall.
Our one bedroom had a queen sized bed, dresser and hutch, chest of drawers, crib and changing table in it, and let me tell you, it was cramped. The accompanying cradle we decided to place in the living room along with the swing and rocking chair. We ran out of room really quickly, but it made quieting the baby in the middle of the night with the pacifier (once she was around 3 months old) very easy since it was as difficult as leaning to the end of the bed to take care of her.
We were under a six month lease in this apartment, so we knew we were stuck for a few months, but we asked about moving to a two bedroom in the same complex as soon as our lease was up. We figured that would be the easiest move to make with a veritable newborn rather than head off somewhere else, and we were sure to request a first floor apartment since we hated the stair climb (and I have yet to meet anyone who actually liked the stair climb).
Now, we weren't without incident during our tenure on the second floor. We were able to look out our window straight down a sidewalk to the parking lot on the far side, and on one night, we heard a loud pop. It didn't take long for us to figure out this was a gunshot, and the appearance of the red and blue flashing lights helped to solidify this theory that night. The news the following day, I believe, had a short blurb on it, and that was the end of it. I don't think much of anything happened in the end, but it was the only excitement we had there from the actual complex.
Most of our excitement came from the fact that we were both working and trying to make a life while handling an infant. Our support structure came into play again as we had grandparents watching Rock Girl during the week while we worked, and we learned just how hard that could be since we both rarely saw Rock Girl during the week. The Queen's job at the bank tended to keep her as late as 6 or 7 on some nights, and while I got off at 5 or 6, I occasionally was later as well. This left the weekends to do anything, and we made the most of what we had with her.
The period at the one bedroom was very short, though, so there isn't much else that can be said about it except that it provided a starting place for us. In retrospect, we've found several things we could have done better to set us in a better direction and gotten us to where we are now a little quicker, but that's the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we did the best we knew how to, and it all did work out in the end. Once we hit the two bedroom, life got a little more interesting, since both The Queen and Rock Girl met friends.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment