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Comment by F. Lastname on September 27, 2011 at 3:52am

Her mom had a difficult pregnancy that threatened by hypertension so that childbirth had to be induced in order not to put mother and child at risk. I got more worried about both of them than when my own wife was due to give birth to our two children, if that is any indication of how things change. At labor I was told that my daughter's husband lost consciousness. Haaay, I thought this business of making babies and delivering them is so fretful that I was glad I was over it.

 

When she was born, her radiant appearance and unusual features (brown hair and eyebrows but dark eyelashes, etc) was such a relief. Actually even though her dad is of Welsh Scottish descent, they are not light haired and I started fantasizing about her taking on after the Caucasoid features of one grandparent I had (my dad's uncle) who had blond hair and pink skin, the residues of my Spanish forebears. And when she started to open her eyes slightly, I thought I detected a shape peculiar to that ancestry. With such good looks all she needed was to be smart and the world would be good.

 

The next three months were awful, and that is saying it lightly. I pitied my daughter and son in law as they took turns to cope with a colicky baby who would not stop fussing from the time she woke up to the time she went to bed. I remember that my daughter used to have crying spells asking whether this was as bad as it could get. One day she said over the phone that she was ready to jump over the bridge and even though it was a figure of speech, I imagined I could also do the same. They would take turns looking after their baby especialy in the wee hours of morning when one's sanity and patience is already at an end. And this would go on day after day, week after week, I started

to wonder if babies were worth all that aggravation. They swore that she was going to be their first and only baby and I could only sigh in relief (because our weekends too got voluntarily preempted).

 

Until one day, my daughter hired what is called here as "sleep trainer". What, I asked, what is that and what is it that they do? Well, she explained that babies really like to do nothing more than to sleep and sleep, and when they are kept from doing that, they simply lose themselves and breaking out into meltdowns. I said why, we didnt have that when we were growing up. Yes, we also heard of colic babies, but either we applied some Gramma's poultice on them or we just let them holler until they fall asleep, usually in a duyan. But believe me, after two sessions it started to have the desired effect of course at a cost of a couplke of thousand bucks. I thought us grandparents knew all about this. 

 

She started to fall asleep regularly, and in due time the colic was gone, and she turned into the most pleasant and angelic baby one could imagine. So that was all, and when I researched this, there was truth indeed behind it. Especially after we noticed that there were some signs of a very keen mind and acutely aware person in her (like that incident in the park) that we thought it was "well worth it" after all.

 

Well, the best confirmation of that is the mother is now again pregnant! With this kindn of experience, I can only say "Bring them on"! Ah, what would grandparents not give up when it comes to these things.