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!