I Am An Auntie!

First, I apologize this is a day late.  It is just one of those weeks where things are not going right.  At work, I keep having questions to answer and tasks to complete, but no one will leave me alone long enough to actually do anything about them.  Second, the little temporary post I put up yesterday indicated that I might change this blog to Thursday.  When I started the blog, Wednesday was my husband’s school day and so I was home by myself.  Now I find myself trying to post it while he is breathing down my neck wanting dinner, talking, or sex.  Thursday is his bar night, which would give me some alone time to focus, although it is also currently my workout night which eats a chunk of the evening.  Anyway no permanent change to Thursday yet, but it might be coming.  Now we move on to the topic of the week.

To reiterate my title above, I am an auntie.  My sister had a baby on Thursday, March 10, 2016 in the late afternoon.  The baby weighs 7 pounds, 8 ounces.  She measures 21 inches long.  Her name begins with a T, but I will not give it here to protect my sister’s privacy.  My sister and the baby are both healthy, despite T being three weeks early and being delivered by cesarean section.  I have had one short phone call from my sister on Thursday evening.  I have received four photos of the baby, one from my mother and three from my sister’s fiancé (T’s daddy).  I have sent three texts to my sister asking how she and T are doing, and received two brief answers back that all is well.  I have seen three pictures of the baby on facebook, all posted by my sister’s fiancé.  This is the extent of my knowledge about the baby, the delivery, and the general situation.

There are two things that keep coming to the surface when I think about my sister and my new little niece T.  The first is how very disconnected I feel from my family right now.  I have no idea what is going on in Pennsylvania because I am so far away in Virginia.  Although I am trying to figure out timing for making a trip up there, work and family obligations do not allow me to easily make the six hour drive on short notice at this time of year.  I definitely understand that my sister is exhausted, from the surgery and from dealing with the newborn, so I am not so concerned that I have not heard much from her.  I am however a bit surprised and disconcerted that I have heard nothing from my mother.  I expected her to call me all gushy about her first grandbaby, but other than the text when T was first born I have not heard a peep from her.  No one else in the family has contacted me either.  I assume everything has gone well, but it worries me that I seem to be so forgotten down here.  I will probably call my mother this weekend, just to make sure everything is well.  I feel very alone and very not part of my family at the moment though, and it makes me really homesick.

The other thing that surfaces is a general level of anxiety concerning my sister and T.  The pregnancy was not planned.  It happened shortly after a miscarriage for a pregnancy that was planned.  My sister took the miscarriage hard emotionally.  She took the new pregnancy harder.  She has insisted throughout the pregnancy that she did not want to have the baby and that she felt totally unconnected to T.  She was worried that when the baby was born, she would continue to feel disconnected.  She sometimes indicated she wanted to give the baby away.  It makes me even more anxious to know that their family life is not particularly stable.  She and her fiancé had been having some relationship issues prior to the baby, a lot of them revolving around money.  They both have jobs that provide a steady stream of income, but neither makes much.  They have a lot of debt between them.  Her fiancé also has an impulse buying habit, which my sister’s anxiety over finances does not accept easily.  The baby of course is just going to cost even more money, putting more stress on them.  Her fiancé is incredibly excited about the baby, but I do not feel he fully understands my sister’s inability to connect to the situation nor the absolute responsibility required to care for a baby.  I know they will grow up as the situation progresses, but I worry about all of them during the process.  The good news is from what I can gather through her texts my sister does so far seem to be accepting the baby now that T has actually been born.

I feel so helpless.  I cannot be there to offer my love and support to my sister and my niece in this exciting time in their lives.  I hope I can get up there in the next couple of weeks.  I very much want to meet T.  I also want to see my sister and just reassure myself that she is doing well.

Congratulations to my sister!  Welcome to the world T!  See you next week!