{"id":4624,"date":"2013-02-02T13:30:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=4624"},"modified":"2014-11-18T12:43:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T17:43:39","slug":"baers-balancing-act-student-and-parent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/4624","title":{"rendered":"Baer’s balancing act; student and parent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Baer\"By Hannah Hecht–<\/strong>A baby sits quietly on the floor, her face screwed up in concentration. In one hand she holds a green fabric tote and in the other a picture book. She tries and tries to put the book into the bag over and over again, but like a square block into a round hole, she just can\u2019t get it to fit. Her face turns red and she vents her frustration in a long wail. Her mother comes forward calmly, picks the little girl up, and shakes her head.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry Katelynn, but sometimes books just don\u2019t fit into bags.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother cradles the baby in her arms and the baby\u2019s crying subsides and is eventually replaced with a smile. The mother smiles back, love reflected in her gaze.<\/p>\n

Amy Baer, a senior math and chemistry major, has a lot more responsibility than most Morningside students. She balances the role of student with work and, most importantly, being a full-time mom.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere,\u201d she says in the kitchen of her small Dimmitt apartment.\u201d Why don\u2019t we take this into your room and read it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The nursery is littered with toys, a result of the baby\u2019s habit of pulling everything off of shelves to examine them, only to get bored and pull off something else. A poster of Sesame Street characters hangs close to the ground, at eye-level for a child who has just began to walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book has too many words for her, so sometimes I just make them up,\u201d Amy says. \u201cThere once was a boy and a bear.\u201d she mock-reads.<\/p>\n

The baby\u2019s face lights up, engrossed in the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich one\u2019s the bear, Katelynn?\u201d<\/p>\n

The little girl points her index finger to a picture in the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that\u2019s the boy. Which one is the bear?\u201d<\/p>\n

She moves her finger toward the bear in the illustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood job!\u201d<\/p>\n

Baer is usually seen around the Morningside campus pulling her one-year-old daughter in a red wagon. On the back is a sign: \u201cThey see me rollin\u2019, they hatin,\u2019\u201d a reference to the rap song \u201cRidin\u2019 Dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m probably \u2018the baby girl\u2019 to a lot of people and I know Katelynn is the Dimmitt baby.\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tough to be a mom, study as a full-time student, and work in residence life, but somehow Amy manages the balancing act.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you get into a routine, it gets a little easier, but it\u2019s still difficult.\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to do one thing really well, because I\u2019m doing too many things at once. Sometimes I feel like I\u2019m putting Katelynn in daycare too much or like there are times that I could study more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy attends class in the mornings, takes her daughter along on errands or to work in the early afternoons, and sets aside her evenings to play with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter she goes to bed, I start being a student again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m usually in awe of how much she can do in a day,\u201d says Amy\u2019s friend Julie Pitel, \u201cShe is a person who does what she needs to and doesn\u2019t complain. When things get a little overwhelming, she doesn\u2019t always like to ask for help. However, she knows that she has people who care about her and Katelynn, and she\u2019s getting better at asking for help when she needs it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katelynn and Amy are their own little family in their first floor Dimmitt apartment, along with help from Katelynn\u2019s father,\u00a0 Amy\u2019s boyfriend of two years Patrick Whitsell.<\/p>\n

Amy hasn\u2019t always been comfortable with her situation. When she first discovered that she was pregnant as a sophomore at the age of 19, it seemed like the end of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like the worst feeling I\u2019ve ever felt in my life. I thought my life was over,\u201d she says, \u201cI thought I was too young to be making big decisions. Do I get an abortion and feel awful about it for the rest of my life or do I tell my family and ruin my relationship with them? There were just two incredibly bleak options.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, things slowly worked themselves out and she decided to keep her baby. Amy gave birth to a beautiful girl on November 1, 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt [keeping her baby] wasn\u2019t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but there were still some really rough moments\u2026 and there still are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her family\u2019s reaction had a lasting effect on their relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a small elephant in the room.\u201d she says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s huge, but some of the things that were said can\u2019t be taken back. However, Katelynn has a good relationship with her grandparents, probably more than I have a good relationship with my parents, and I suppose that\u2019s the most important thing to me. She\u2019s still young and she still needs all the love she can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy says that there were good things to come out of her pregnancy. She thinks that it has brought her both personal and financial independence and that she is no longer scared to graduate and go out into the world.<\/p>\n

Sheri Hineman, Amy\u2019s boss at her job in Residence Life and occasional babysitter, says that the experience has helped Amy grow as a person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have seen Amy grow in her ability to adapt.\u00a0 She has had to adapt to Katelynn\u2019s schedule.\u00a0 She has had to adapt to sticking to a budget to buy what she and Katelynn need.\u00a0 She has had to adapt to not having the traditional college experience that most other students her age will have.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduation in the spring, Amy plans to find a job either here in Sioux City, close to Katelynn\u2019s father, or in her hometown of Council Bluffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI might do anything from working in a lab, to being an analyst for a company, to maybe even doing something in residence life, because I have a background with that here at Morningside.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wishes that she had the choice to keep her same daughter Katelynn, but instead have her a little later in life.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I had Katelynn, I love her and I don\u2019t regret having such a wonderful daughter, but I still wish that I would have waited,\u201d Amy says. \u201cIn the future, I just want her to know that she can tell me anything and I really mean that. And I want her to know that I\u2019m going to be supportive of her no matter what mistakes she makes. I know what it\u2019s like to be in a position where you think that you can\u2019t tell your parents because your life will be over. In the end, I just want her to be able to think for herself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Hecht–A baby sits quietly on the floor, her face screwed up in concentration. In one hand she holds a green fabric tote and in the other a picture book. She tries and tries to put the book into the bag over and over again, but like a square block into a round hole,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":4625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morningside-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}