When Ana and I were getting aware of the pregnancy we were living in France since April 2006 six weeks after Markus’ birth in Naperville. In late 2006 we had one big problem, we were green card holders thus not citizens and Gisele was going to be born in France. She was not going to be American if not born on American soil.
We drafted a plan to spend the summer in Boston and have her born while staying there. The only idea I had was to use the somewhat permanent address at Inman Street 31 with Sarah Cortes, where I was usually renting a room on a monthly basis for my frequent stays at MIT. Sarah agreed to rent out the uppermost floor to Ana and me and that was the plan. It turned out to be a quite solid basic plans, but the details were going to be quite chaotic.
We arrived in Cambridge as planned about 6 weeks before Gisele was due, which is the latest you are supposed to fly when pregnant, or is it? Well, this is what we thought. It was unclear what our home address was supposed to be. Inman Street did not seem right because we would never receive mail there and no name was on the door. So, we chose 77 Massachusetts Ave, which is clearly not a private address, but nobody ever said anything. I was worried a bit but then again, I was employed at MIT and the address was legit. It never turned out to be a problem which until today makes me wonder.
We spend a marvelous summer with the two boys in Cambridge and the area. They took to the US with ease and Ana walked them around Cambridge and Boston a lot, more then she ever did afterwards, in fact even myself spent more time in Boston and got to know Cambridge much better than in the eight years before. The boys and Ana visited me in the office several times. We thought about the delivery and we knew that we had to do something about our two little boys, Ivan was not even three years and Markus younger than one and a half. Whom could we hand those two over while Ana and I would be in the delivery room in the hospital (Brigham and Women’s in Boston by the way). We were looking for some baby sitters and Ana eventually made contact with a young woman from Mexico who could watch the kids while birth was taking place. Neither Ana nor I really seriously considered the possibility that I would watch them and Ana would do the delivery by herself. Retrospectively of course an option but we did not even think about that. I told Ana to get to know the young woman better but after a first meet the option sounded good enough and we thought we were set.
I am pretty sure the due date was pretty early in July, but Gisele held out for a good while and finally on July 14 Ana was sure the little baby girl (our first girl) was about to arrive. Unfortunately, due to the delays we somehow lost our baby sitter, she had to travel to Mexico, and we had no clue what to do. Through the hispanic connection Ana had though the phone number of a hispanic person called Fe who might be up for the job. She worked daytime in a shop on Mass Ave close to central square. Ana found her and left her with the kids it was late afternoon by then. This was after I made some frantic calls to my faculty colleague Peter Fisher whether he could help me out of a pickle but no luck! Finally, we were on our way to the hospital with a somewhat weird feeling leaving our little boys behind but then we also had to focus on Gisele. It took Ana a while to get going in Brigham and Women’s but eventually once it started it all went quick. Gisele appeared in this world on Saturday July 14, 2007 at 1:43 early in the morning. She was in great shape with way more hair than Markus even more than Ivan and we were thrilled! After the usual formalities eventually I realized that I had to get home to take care of the boys. I took a cab to get back to Inman Street and was wondering whether everything would be all right. The longer the ride took the more I got worried, of course not admitting to myself I was. Finally, I found Fe with our boys at around 6am in the morning mostly calm in our room. They were glad to see me, Fe looked somewhat exhausted, but not too bad. They seemed to have cuddled up in bed to sleep. Everybody was happy. I wrote Fe a check and that was it.
I was very relieved, and prepared our usual web site and send email to everybody about Gisele birth. I am not sure I really slept any, I just grabbed the boys put them into the stroller and walked from Inman Street all the way to the hospital; almost 3 miles but it felt good because otherwise I would have been very tired. I explained the boys on the way what had happened and told them that Mami was fine and that they had a new baby sister, Gisele. They were listening and interested but I could tell they did not really understand what happened. Eventually we made it to the hospital – me sweating and tired.
We found Mami’s room and knocked and then entered. Ivan and Markus went in carefully not sure what to expect. Ana was sitting in her bed exhausted but very happy with Gisele sucking and calling in excitement when the three of us walked in, of course mostly calling for our two boys 😉 Ivan approached Ana but Markus looked at the situation and turned around on his heel and ran out of the room. Ana and I looked at each other with huge eyes. Not really what we had expected. I ran after him and grabbed him and held him in my arm. He was not happy about this new baby, but we talked with him Ana and eye and eventually once Ana (his absolute favorite at the time) had embraced him and talked with him he looked at this suspicious new baby.
