ethnography final

Greg DeSilva
10-14-09
Ethnography
Pappas

The Life of a Young Mother

My older sister Jenny excelled in many things during her high school years; from pitching a softball to writing a brilliant paper for English class. Ten years of pitching lessons, softball practices, and year-round play came to end in her Junior year of high school due to a shoulder injury. It was very much dramatic as she came to the conclusion she would never put her cleats on again. Being a very intelligent young lady, school came easy to her except for math. In English she passed with flying colors as reading and writing became more of a hobby then an assignment. Jenny had plans to go to college in California, where our older sister lives. However, after high school graduation she started college at URI where in her sophomore year decided to become an English major. Her first semester was spent living on campus where she was miserable in her tiny dorm with two roommates. The next semester she moved into a musty house off campus with one roommate. Sophomore year she moved back home and commuted an hour to school everyday, which she did to save money but I’m sure she spent almost a year’s tution on gas.
Now everybody had that one high school crush that can never be forgotten. Well lucky Jenny had a big crush on a certain boy who was two years older then her. When she was fifteen they went on one “real” date but ended up just friends. The summer before Jenny’s junior year in college she took me to a party a few towns over. It just so happens it her high school crushes’ house. She was now 19 and he was 21, and a mature relationship started after a night of beer pong and watching the Red Sox. They were together everyday and she spent most of her nights at his house and she eventually moved in with him.
All went well until one day Jenny didn’t feel too good and this lasted a couple days. She was throwing up constantly. My sister waited nineteen years to have sex and seven months after she did she found herself in the bathroom at her work, starring at a positive pregnancy test. Jenny was in shock and over whelmed not knowing what to do, with the added stress that the father of the baby growing inside her had recently become her ex-boyfriend.
As Jenny went on to tell her ex-boyfriend he was obviously shocked, Jenny says the first thing he did was make a tall drink. Going to the doctor a couple days later, she was told that she was in fact pregnant. Confused and scared it was very hard to tell her parents and later on her brother. After many tears, long and intense family talks/fights, and talks with her ex-boyfriend Jenny decided that she would go against what everyone else thought would be best to keep the baby. Jenny was convinced it was a boy.
The decision put a lot of stress on the household and nobody knew what was to come of this decision. Our mother was behind her completely, our father was less than enthused, and I was pretty much in the middle. After a couple months the extended family was informed and Jenny had the support she needed.
The pregnancy was not easy for her as she had really bad morning sickness every day and was eventually put on bed rest, for reasons my sister has tried to explain to me more than once but honestly, I’m not all too interested in my sister’s uterus.
Three weeks before Jenny’s due date I was getting my wisdom teeth out. I joked that she would go into labor on that day and I would be on painkillers and unable to drive her to the hospital. Sure enough that night her water broke, but luckily our mom had not taken her sleeping pill and was able to drive her to the hospital. After 8 hours, Blake Anthony was born and Jenny got to hold her baby boy for the first time.
Obviously Blake came out the perfect little boy, but maybe I’m a biased uncle. Unlike most babies who look like little old men at birth, Blake was the cutest thing Jenny and everyone else in the room had ever seen. But he wasn’t so cute the night they came home and he was crying non-stop for hours. I woke up to find Jenny pacing in the hallway, with bags under her eyes and Blake screaming in her arms. I moved out to my dad’s house the next day, but everyday my sister would tell me how Blake was crying all night, so she slept in the chair with him or how Blake had pooped four times in one hour and she was running out diapers. Jenny tells me that being in the hospital was easy with the nurses there to help her and being home is completely different. She complains about my mother being to opinonated and says “there’s too many moms in the house, just like when they say too many cook’s in the kitchen ruins the soup.”
Blake’s father, Sean, is pretty involved, as far as I could see. He slept over most nights but Jenny says he’s never changed a diaper and has only gotten up once in the middle of the night. They sleep in the same bed, he sleeps all the way against the wall and Jenny sleeps all the way on the other side, near the bassinet. My sister calls Sean her boyfriend to our family, but she only does that so she doesn’t get any comments about them not being together. From what I can see they basically are together, but Jenny says she feels like she’s doing this all on her own.
I don’t really know what the baby blues are, but I know my sister had them. She cried all the time, and when you asked her why she didn’t know. She started and stopped for no reason and said it’d go away soon and that it’s normal. I havent seen my sister cry in a few days, so maybe her blues are gone.
My sister is currently unemployeed, because she couldn’t get maternity leave from her work. She complains that formula and diapers are expensive and that she doesn’t really understand how her WIC checks work and she’s a little embarrassed to use them at the market. Jenny says she’s going back to work soon, because she’s running out of money and seventy-five dollars a week in child support isn’t cutting it. A few days ago she signed up for spring semester night classes at URI, she says she can work and go to school and take care of Blake; sure sounds like a lot to me.
Jenny wants to move into her own apartment with Blake and wishes she could give Blake a real home and a real family. She get’s overwhelmed with washing bottles five times a day because my mom’s house doesn’t have a dishwasher and breastfeeding just didn’t work out. When my sister isn’t downstairs with the baby it’s pretty much a given that she’s upstairs with her breastpump. She says she hates it and it hurts but it’s the best thing for the baby. Our freezer is full of plastic breastmilk storage bags, I think it’s pretty gross. Today she bought something called Mother’s Tea, that’s supposed to increase her milk supply. I really hate when Jenny talks about her breastmilk, just like I hated when she talked her uterus.
The pregnancy not only brought in a beautiful young boy but brought my family closer together and another family into the family. Jenny and I used to fight all the time but now get along so well. Our father is over the house everyday and so in love with his grandson. Our older sister will be flying out soon to see her little nephew and is going to be his godmother. Jenny made a decision that has changed our family and her life forever and I truly believe she has no regrets when I see how she looks at her baby boy.