Our New Home

Our trip to Louisiana was interesting. Paul didn't have a driver's license so I had to drive the entire trip. We decided to leave out late at night so the baby would sleep most of the way. She did! And so did her father! I could barely stay awake trying to drive and no one to talk to. I stopped at a gas station and got me some Jolt Cola and smoked about 3 packs of cigarettes to try and stay awake. We made it safely though. It was a long trip but worth it after we got there. We went to my dad's house. This was where we would be staying until my inheritance from my grandmother came in January. My dad had an extra bedroom and had furnished it for us. All we needed were our clothes and personal items and we were able to move right in. I immediately found a job at the SuperCenter. This was a grocery/department store (kind of like a Super Walmart, only bigger). Oh and the gambling man got himself his first "real" job too! At a local Shell Station. He didn't like it much since it was 3rd shift so he soon switched to KMart! Ha! He was a cashier. He and I worked different shifts so that one of us would be home to tend to the baby. When the inheritance money came in, I bought a mobile home, furniture for every room and a brand new 1993 Toyota Tercel! That pretty much took care of the whole $47,000 that I received. It wasn't long after we moved into our new home that I got another big surprise! I was pregnant again. This could not have come at a worse time. I was planning a June wedding and it was February. I had already bought my dress, booked the reception hall and the DJ. Well, the baby was due in September so there was no way I was going to fit into that dress in June so we decided to put it off until after the baby was born. We found out quickly that in Louisiana, a baby can not have the father's last name unless the mother and father are married so we decided to go to the courthouse and get married. We tied the knot on July 16, 1993. Nine days before Allison's 2nd birthday and 2 months, 11 days before the birth of our second daughter. My brother and his friend William were our witnesses and my father was there too. I wore a peach colored maternity dress and Paul wore black slacks and a peach colored shirt with a black tie. Allison was there too. We had a small reception back at dad's new mobile home where we had a cake waiting and a couple of cards from family members. This was NOT my dream wedding but I guess it had to do! On September 27, 1993, I went into the hospital for a scheduled C-section to give birth to my second daughter.

The First Year

I had to stay in the hospital for 4 days after delivering Allison. I had that constipation problem again and after the 4th day, I decided to lie to my doctor when he asked if I'd been to the bathroom yet. I wanted to go home! That was a big mistake seeing that 10 days later I was in the bathroom for hours crying while trying to go to the bathroom. Not fun!! When Allison was only a few days old, I think I may have gotten a little touch of post partum depression. She was crying and didn't need a diaper change, didn't want her bottle, wouldn't touch a pacifier, all I could do was rock her back and forth while she screamed to the top of her lungs. It didn't take long til I was crying too. I was just rocking her back in forth in Grandma Emily's rocking chair and we were both crying together. Paul finally called him mom and the conversation went something like this: "Mom, you need to get over here quick, they're both crying and I don't know how to make 'em stop!" She came right away, took the baby from my arms and the baby silenced very quickly. She told me that the baby could sense that I was upset and that she just needed someone else to console her. We found out later that Allison had colic and reflux. She was a fussy baby for the first few months (actually she's been pretty fussy for the last 18 years!) Grandma Emily called her "Toots". She has never lived that down with the Nachand side of the family. When Allison was 9 months old, Paul and I had a big falling out (who knows what over, probably his gambling), but anyway, he decided to throw all of mine and the baby's things out unto the front yard. So I picked up what I could and threw it in my little Plymouth Horizon and went back to my mom's house. My cousin Ginnie had been living with them since Grandma Ford passed away in August. She didn't know it at the time but she would soon become my live-in nanny. I was working at Angilo's Pizza on Berry Blvd and had been since Allison was 6 weeks old. Ginnie would always babysit for me while I worked. I didn't stay with mom long. I got my own apartment on Taylor Blvd, not far from my first apartment. Ginnie moved with me to be my sitter while I worked. We lived in a 2-bedroom apartment above a Music Store. The rooms were huge and this is where Allison learned to take her first steps. I had a one-year birthday party for her at River Falls Mall and Paul came. This was the first time we had really seen each other since the break up 3 months before. After the party, we started talking again and it wasnt long until he moved into the apartment with us. Three months later, we decided that if we wanted our relationship to work, for the sake of our baby, we needed to get away from Louisville. Paul needed to be away from his gambling friends and in a different setting where he could grow up and learn to be a father. He was almost 21 and didnt even have his drivers license yet! Shoot, he had never even had a "real" job, outside of working under the table for his dad at the racetrack. And that didnt account for much since he blew his earnings on horse races before he walked out the door! So, we decided to move to Louisiana. That's where I'm originally from and my brother and father lived there. I was due to get an inheritance from my grandfather's estate when I turned 21 so we thought going there to make a new life would be the best thing for our relationship. We packed everything we owned inside of the Plymouth Horizon and headed out on Halloween night for the long 14 hour drive to Lafayette!

The Delivery

After a couple of months, Paul and I decided to move into his grandmother's upstairs. It was like a small efficiency apt without a kitchen. It had a bedroom, living room and bathroom. Grandma Emily let us use her kitchen when we needed it but at age 19, we ate mostly Hardee's and White Castle's! I had a rather easy pregnancy. Although I got huge, I didn't have any morning sickness or anything like that. I craved crackers and they had to be Zesta and also crushed ice and it had to be crushed! The only time I remember feeling sick at all was when my friend Donda and I went to Hardee's and I got a cheeseburger and the pickle was hot, like it had been put in the microwave and it about made me barf! By the way, Donda was pregnant too and she got sick all the time so she was probably laughing at me for getting sick that one time. Donda worked at a fast food restaurant and would have to leave the counter to go throw up so she was probably hating me for not getting sick at all! Anyways, living at Grandma Emily's was cool because we didnt have to pay any rent and Emily made sure we had everything we needed for the baby! I had two baby showers and got pretty much three of everything, one for our place, one for my mom's house and one for Paul's mom's house. I had several labor scares throughout my 8th and into my 9th month. You know, those Braxton Hicks contractions? My all time favorite was when I thought I was having back labor pains and I went to the hospital along with half the family and a bunch of friends and the nurse came out to announce to everyone that I was not in labor....I was constipated! That was fun! I sure felt stupid! I ended up being 9 days overdue before the doctor finally put me in the hospital to induce labor. I went in the night before so they could monitor the baby's heart rate overnight and start inducing me the next morning. They started inducing me around 6:00 AM and the doctor came in around 10:00 AM to examine me. He said "no dilation, it will be another 8-10 hours before this baby is born". I found that hard to believe considering how bad my contractions had been. They were topping the chart over 100% for the past two hours! So, everyone that had been waiting all morning, starving, decided to go get some food, including Paul. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom! That was a bad idea! As soon as I got back in bed and the nurses hooked me back up to all the monitors, the baby's heartbeat plummeted! It was ranging between 132 and 150 all morning and it dropped to 36 beats per minute. The nurses hurriedly called the doctor back in and the next thing I know, they are stripping me, shaving me (yes, we had carpet in the 90's), and giving me an epidural! I had like 6 people working on me at the same time, pulling me every which way and I was scared to death! I was only 19, barely 19! So, they paged Paul, "Mr. Paul Nachand, please report to the operating room immediately". Well, that was enough to scare the dickens out of him. He RAN back to the area of my room as fast as he could. He didnt even know where the operating room was! As he approached my room, they were rolling me out on a stretcher, taking me to the operating room. The doctor grabbed his arm in his wrist area and asked "are you the father?" Paul nodded and stared at me, all hooked up to oxygen, looking scared to death! I'm sure he thought I was gonna die or something! He was only 19! As the doctor grabbed his wrist and told him to come with him to get his scrubs on, the doctor realized that Paul's pulse was beating out of his arm and told him "son, you arent going to be able to go in, you're heart rate is up too high and if you pass out on that floor, we will just have to leave you there because the mother and baby are most important right now". I was already in the operating room being prepped for the C-section, waiting for Paul to come stand by my side. When the doctor came in, there was no Paul! I couldn't talk, I had an oxygen mask on my face and was feeling really loopy! The anesthesiologist came around and started rubbing my head and told me it was going to be ok and that he would be there with me the entire time. At 10:39 AM, yes only 39 minutes later, my little girl was born weighing 5 lbs 14 oz and only 18 1/2 inches long. She didnt have much hair but she had a very loud cry! They brought her up towards my face so that I could see her and tears rolled down my face. She was beautiful, my first baby girl! And she was healthy and she made it into the world without "many" problems. They took her away to "keep her warm" and finished stitching me up. I didn't see her agian until 2:30 PM! It seemed like a decade! We named her Allison Dawn. Believe it or not, the idea came from a race horse named Alli-Dar. After all, her daddy was a gambling man!

The Beginning

Big Dean went to Sr. Prom with me. It was the day before my 18th birthday. We had been "talking" for a couple of months. I met him at Parkmoor Bowling Alley. I worked in the concession area and my skills on the grill attracted him to the grill everyday. I had my own place on Taylor Blvd and he was fresh out of a relationship that left him with a two year old daughter. The baby's mom didn't like mine and Dean's relationship much. She wasn't happy about another young woman being around her child during the weekend visits. Dean claimed to hate her but always ended up back over there whenever I wasn't looking! Dean was a pool shark and a poker player. That was his occupation! One night, Dean made the mistake of asking me to pick up his friend Paul and bring him to the pool hall in New Albany. They were going to play pool against each other for money. Paul was 18, just like me! He also came to Parkmoor but never said alot to me cause he knew I was "Dean's girl". This night was different though. During the ride from Jeffersonville to New Albany, Paul and I hit it off. I had always felt that Dean wasn't serious about our relationship because he was still hung up on his "baby momma". So I decided to take a little interest in Paul. I began separating myself from Dean more and more each day and began flirting with Paul. I decided to take Paul back to my place one night and one thing led to another and wah-lah, we became a "couple". Paul and I dated for about 3 weeks, after that night and I decided I really didn't like him much and didn't feel that natural attraction to him. I told him I wasn't interested in seeing him anymore and we both went our separate ways. About a month later, I called Paul up and told him the news....I had missed my period! Paul, at age 19, just laughed and said "yeah, that's what they all say when they want to get a guy back!" He told me if it were true, I needed to have an abortion! I was furious! I said to him "that's fine, I will take care of my baby on my own, I don't need you!" I didn't talk to Paul for a couple of weeks after that. I moved back home after breaking the news to my parents and breaking their hearts! I called Paul up one day and told him to meet me at the planned parenting clinic. He did. My intentions were different than his. I wanted him to get all of the information, watch the videos, etc of the abortion process. I had no intention of ever getting an abortion! He walked out of there with a total different take on life. He apologized to me for asking me to get an abortion and told me that we would be ok. The three of us, we would be ok!