The one with all the reminiscing

Eleven years ago today, I had lunch with my Mom, and we bought a hairbrush.

We were waiting around to see if I was in labor, you see, and it turns out I was. I'd just had a prenatal appointment and the doctor, knowing I lived an hour and a half away by bus, suggested we not go home just yet.

So we had a (light) lunch at the Hotel Don Carlos, and bought a baby hairbrush at Mas X Menos (I can't recall that we ever once used it, but I'm sure the girls appropriated it for their stuffed animals eventually) and then went back to the clinic and were admitted. Well, I was. And Mom got to stay right up until I went into the delivery room. She brushed my hair for me.

Alex and I picked out the name "Robin" while waiting for the second checkup, if I recall correctly. I was wearing an enormous shirt with a very large paisley pattern. It was nicer than it sounds.

She was born in the late afternoon, and we stayed the night. I remember trying to get her out of the plastic bassinet beside the bed in the middle of the night. I couldn't reach it that well. I'm glad I didn't drop her.

We took her home the next morning, about an hour or so before Dad showed up at the hospital, having moved heaven, earth and office schedules to get an earlier flight.

We scandalized the neighbors (who told my mother in law on me) by taking the baby out of the house when she was just a couple of days old. Broke the quarantine, don't you know. "Quarantine" being derived from the same root as "cuarenta", meaning 40. That's the number of days you're traditionally supposed to be paranoid about the baby and avoid exposing it to...well, pretty much anything if I recall correctly. But I needed nursing bras and wasn't about to leave the baby behind when she didn't have any sort of eating schedule worked out yet.

She turned out okay, though. I don't think we ruined her.

The post on the day she's actually here to celebrate with us will probably be less about me and more about her, but she's with her dad today so I get to reminisce instead.