Baby Mi (My Baby) Part 2
BABY MI
Mayowa Ojo
6/10/20262 min read
The first time I noticed it two weeks post Leah’s arrival, I quickly blamed it on Baby brain. I stepped out of the bedroom to go take a shower and I came back to meet Leah in the opposite direction from how I left her ten minutes before. How else was I to stay sane if I didn’t blame it on baby brain?
How do you explain a two week old baby turning 180 degrees in minutes or turning at all? This was seventy nine when growth was normal unlike these millennial babies that start changing from the day they’re born but I digress.
When this happened about two or three more times I was convinced I had a demon child. There was simply no other explanation. I didn’t have a help so there was no way someone was moving the baby and even if someone were why would it be only when I was in the bathroom or generally away from her?
I tried not to freak my husband out so I didn’t tell him. I wanted to tell my best friend but I was afraid she would either avoid my house or avoid carrying my baby. I mean, I was already afraid of carrying her!
There were days when I did nothing but watch her all day waiting to catch her turn but she never did. She only turned on days or at moments I was away from her.
And so I started deliverance prayers on my daughter, rebuking, binding, casting, setting loose and everything in between (except death of course).
I kept up this prayers for the next three weeks, expectant that this symptom of whatever it was (I dared not think evil of her) would cease but it did not.
One day I was sweeping the front of the house while Leah slept, praying as I swept. I heard the front door creak a little bit and then I saw my first daughter Sharon holding her baby sister by the head, feet dangling off the floor. She looked at me and said “Baby Mi”.
In case you missed what I just typed, I said my two year old daughter carried her four and a half week old baby sister by the head with the rest of her body dangling and she smiled when she saw me, saying “baby mi”.
The broom stuck to my hand for all of one second while my brain processed the one single thing that could go wrong if I screamed - Sharon would be alarmed and drop... I shudder just thinking about it.
So I said, “Hello Sharon,” while inching slowly toward her like an animal stealthily approaching its prey. “Thank you, how are you?” I sing-sang in the way parents sing-song to their children.
Sharon smiled, most likely thinking she was doing a good thing.
Once I reached her and snatched Leah from her hand I smacked both her hands (yes I’m African and a two year old isn’t too young to be reprimanded) and warned her sternly that her baby sister was not the same as her dolls.
It was then I realized that she had been the one moving her sister in the cot whenever I stepped away from her for a while.
To think I’d been wasting precious time binding and casting. The things God must be privy to and maybe find hilarious while we labour and slave hoping for an intervention.
sigh
The other day Leah had her first child and at some point said “Baby mi...” somewhere in the middle of the conversation.
I smiled.
Baby mi is all grown up with her own “Baby mi”.