Nov
19
I like to think that having gone through this whole parenting-a-baby-business twice now, I’m a little more savvy to what’s going on an infant’s ever-growing, but ultimately still Chiclet-sized brain. I know that babies love measuring cups and remote controls. I know that sometimes babies grind their teeth and that’s totally normal, even if it makes you want to toss them in the recycling bin. I know that no matter how gross a substance is, chances are it’ll come clean in the washing machine. And I know that when a baby goes through a stage of shaking their head back and forth, sometimes it’s just because they’re basically pint-sized stoners and they just like to trip out on what that does to their vision; a person need not necessarily work themselves into a full panic by researching stimming symptoms.
I also know the difference between a hungry cry, and woeful cry, and an angry cry. But I don’t for the life of me have any idea what to do when a baby refuses to sleep and issues forth a nonstop auditory assault for something like six solid hours in the middle of the night.
I comforted him, I fed him, I picked him up and rocked him, I brought him out to watch Fringe (oh stop, we covered his eyes during the scary parts). He would yawn and rub his eyes and look for all the world like he was purely exhausted and we’d put him back to bed and he’d scream. Angrily. He wasn’t in pain, he wasn’t feverish, he didn’t seem sick . . . he was just pissed off.
He’d fall into a light doze in the rocking chair but I can’t sleep in a goddamned rocking chair, not only is it uncomfortable but I’m pretty sure a 20-lb baby would drop from my arms like a stone the instant I nodded off. He didn’t like our bed. He didn’t want his crib, or his bouncy seat. It went on for HOURS. Way past the point where I thought a baby would simply pass out from the sheer exhaustion of being such an asshole for so long.
I don’t mean to bring up a sore subject but round about 3 AM I was feeling very nose-punchy about people who say they Never Ever Let Their Children Cry. Really? WELL THEN YOU HAVE NOT MET THIS BABY. Because there was no stopping the discontent, except for the rocking chair thing, and maybe some saintly motherfuckers would have stayed in that chair until the break of dawn but I’m sorry but I am NOT A ROBOT.
Finally, and I am not proud of this, I drugged him. It was 4 AM and I was cross-eyed with flayed nerves and tiredness and I didn’t even measure the Benadryl, I just glugged a little of what I hoped was a non-lethal amount into the nipple of his bottle and gave it to him. (I am also not proud of the fact that when I told JB my plans, and he said “Children’s Benadryl, right?” in a worried tone, I snapped, “NO I AM GOING TO CRUSH UP SOME ADULT DOSES AND ADMINISTER THEM RECTALLY.”)
After that, glorious silence. This morning, a totally non-pissed-off, dopey-grinning baby. WTF.
Was there anything I could have done to make the evening less of a horrorshow? What the hell am I going to do tonight if the same thing happens again? Am I ever going to feel like I really know what I’m doing, or is winging it just the name of the freaking game? I HAVE NO IDEA.
PS: Here are some amusing “school” pictures of Dylan, taken at daycare. I always find these funny, because they never fail to make a normally-cute kid look like . . . well, kind of a goober.
Note that Riley flat-out refused to participate, possibly remembering this horrific incident from a year ago.
Nov
18
A bunch of my coworkers follow me on Twitter. One of the (several) embarrassing things about this has to do with people I work with but don’t know terribly well personally getting an undiluted stream of whining from me, such as after a weekend like this last one, where every message I posted was something along the lines of AIIIEE WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIIIIEEEE. One of my coworkers said that following me was making him terrified of ever having kids of his own.
Right! Well, just doing my part to curb population control, you know.
It does make me wonder what sorts of fragmented picture of my life someone could piece together from Twitter, especially if it’s a person who doesn’t really know me in person or (to my knowledge) read my blog. I must sound like an unhappy, ADD-riddled crank, endlessly making asinine observations. Not that a 140 character-limit window is really the best place for deep personal revelations, but most of my updates could be filed under DEAR LORD SAVE ME FROM MY FERAL CHILDREN or THIS JUST IN! CAFFEINATED BEVERAGES R GOOD.
Something I started to mention on Twitter this morning and didn’t, because I couldn’t think how to describe it with any sort of brevity: I nearly hit a motorcycle on my way into work today. If the accident had happened it would have been my fault without a doubt, but in my defense I’ll say he didn’t have his lights on and he was wearing dark colors from head to toe, making him nearly indistinguishable in the grey, dim morning from the concrete embankment on my left. I looked in my mirror, I looked over my shoulder, and I just didn’t see him in my blind spot before starting to make my way into the left lane — only at the last minute did I get a sense of something not being quite right and hauled ass back into my lane.
Do you ever think about the paths your life has taken, the small and large events that have shaped your footsteps to where you are now? That moment in my car this morning was like some giant, unspeakable peek into What Might Have Been: a slightly different reaction time and who knows what sort of terrible outcome there might have been, instead of what did happen, which was me shaking my head and saying “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and driving the rest of the way to work, biker unscathed.
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