I had a very big argument with Tai the other day and haven’t been home for two days now. I am staying at my friend’s house. I miss my little Grace very much and I want to see her and play with her. I am sitting here, alone in my friend’s bedroom, thinking about my life as a new parent. It is only just over two months for me but you know, it isn’t easy at all.

Since the day we left the hospital, we have been moving around a lot. First we went to stay with my grandmother. Tai was there with Grace all the time while I was at work. I needed to do overtime in order to earn enough money to support my family. However, the house is a long way from work. Sometimes, when I got home I was too tired and went straight to bed without playing around with any of them.

After a few weeks, I realised that Tai had learned a lot from my grandmother. So we figured we would move back to our house. At least it would be nearer to work for me. It was sort of working well for a while. I did spend more time with them at last. But Tai had trouble with doing the housework and looking after Grace. She hadn’t been out of hospital for long.

We then decided to move back to stay at my grandmother’s house. I thought everything would definitely be fine this time. I didn’t think that there would be any problems. But I was wrong. When Tai started to feel better she went back to work for her mother making clothes. So, during the day Grace was with my grandmother. It wasn’t long before I realised it was a bit too much for her as she is getting old.

Tai then called her mum and asked for some suggestions. Her mum volunteered to look after Grace for us while we both worked. But there would be some rules that we had to follow. She said that we couldn’t let anyone know that Grace is our daughter. If anyone asked, she would tell them that Grace is a daughter of Tai’s cousin.

We just agreed with the idea without thinking about it properly. We then moved back to our house again. We would wake up at about 7 o’clock every day to go to work. I took Tai to her mum’s house and then spent a short time with Grace before going to work. But, after a while I stopped doing that. I just dropped Tai off on my way to work. We had a pretty big argument about this.

What I did had made her think that I didn’t care that much about Grace. She misunderstood about what happened. I hadn’t told her that I felt uncomfortable at her mum’s house. I couldn’t really do anything apart from looking at my baby. When the workers stared at me I had to always pretend that Grace wasn’t my daughter. It was hurting me very much every time I had to do that.

After two months of moving around I felt very tired. That is why we had a big argument and I ran away. It has been two days now that I have been sleeping at my friend’s house. I was just thinking I should ring Tai when the phone rang. It was Tai. She must have been thinking the same as me.

We chatted for nearly half an hour. After we finished talking I felt much better. Tai said she had talked to her mum and she suggested that we should move in to her house. Apparently she had stopped caring about the gossiping. She said Grace should be with her parents. As it was good for everyone, I agreed to move in.

It was only a year ago that I was sneaking into her house and no one there knew who I was. Now I would be living with my “in-laws”. I wonder what that will be like?