Friday, August 12, 2005

A Rough Night He fell asleep on his mom's lap (or more precisely, on his mother's Boppy.)   I thought, this'll be easy.  All I have to do is cradle a sleeping baby for a little bit and then lay him in bed.  No problem.  I tried to lay him in bed with his mother and was convinced he was out cold.  I went into the living room to browse websites in quiet. It's 9:00, too early to sleep. "Oh, husband!" my wife calls from the bedroom.  He's awake.  Apparently he woke up the minute I left the room.  Oh well, I'll just hold onto him until he settles down.  Except he doesn't.  Slowly, he goes from awake-and-drowsy to awake-and-not-happy.  Then he started crying.  This took maybe twenty or thirty minutes. I keep trying to do what had worked before.  I try my hold, my own "magic hold," which is holding him under his armpits while his legs dangle over my forearm.  Shake, shake, shake - gentle bouncing motions up and down that barely move him.  (Not the dangerous type of baby-shaking  - it's when you shake him back and forth and his head is flailing about that the damage happens.)   This is the way I hold him, and it almost always works after a while.  It's now 9:30 or so.  Uh oh.  He's crying now.  Not full-bore crying, but whimpering and thrashing around in my arms.  The sitcoms never show babies thrashing around like this - because it's almost impossible to hold onto them when they're doing it.  His arms and legs are getting strong enough that they're destabilizing my hands, and he weighs almost 14 pounds now.  I can't get him to sleep.   I try the rocking chair.  I try swaying back and forth.  I try to swaddle him, but I can't find the official velcro-reinforced swaddling blanket.  I try one of our normal receiving blankets, but it's too short.  I see another larger blanket, and decide to try that one.  I'm a little rough tearing the first blanket off him.  I'm starting to get angry. Swaddling doesn't help.  The blanket just feels like a big stupid lump of cloth wrapped around his legs.   I'm holding him, again in the "magic hold" that isn't working like magic.  I suddenly realize that I've only got one way to hold him, and only a few tricks to get him to sleep, and none of them are working. I try to give him a bottle, and that's when he loses it.  The bottle is the last thing in the world he wants right now, and now he's really crying - red-faced, lip quivering, yelping cries.  I blew it.  I try to hold him, desperately trying to calm him down, but it's too late and he's too angry and I'm too tired... My hand finds his arm.  It's still bucking like crazy, but my hand envelops his entire forearm.  I squeeze it tight.  There is a door that opens in parents that hurt their children, I'm convinced.  They forget that their kids are so fragile.  They stop caring.  The door opens, and they go in, and in that moment the most important thing becomes the parent's peace and quiet.  The baby has to be forced to be quiet, any way possible.  And that's when the babies get shaken, and the bruises start showing up, and the arms get mysteriously broken, and the excuses - "he fell down the stairs" - start. I'm holding his arm and if I applied the right pressure, it would snap like a twig.  In my mind, I can hear the crying, the inconsolable stunned crying that has no end, that would come from this.  If I slipped and hurt this boy, I would never forgive myself.  I let go of his arm, and start talking to him.  I tell him everything.  I tell him how excited I was to have a baby, but now that I've got one I'm a little scared of all the responsibility.  I tell him that I'm afraid that he won't take bottles when we're home alone, and that he'll just starve himself during the day until his mother comes home.  I tell him that, now that I'm about to start full-time baby care, I'm afraid of what the hell I've gotten myself into.  I tell him that his mother called me a "natural dad," but the truth is that I'm not sure if I'm really going to be up for this.  I tell him that whatever happens, I will never ever let himself hurt this little boy.  I promise him.  I say it again four or five times, a ritual for my reassurance more than his. And suddenly he's asleep in my arms.  And we sit down .  I watch a few minutes of "Six Feet Under" and then I decide that he's finally asleep.  I try to take him back to bed.  It's 10:45. He wakes up instantly.  "Honey?" I say to my slumbering wife.  "I need some help."  I'm underplaying it to her.  I'm a little punchy right now, and a little delirious.  I think I'm overtired.  I tell her that he won't sleep and he won't eat, and I think I sound pathetic as I'm relaying the details. "Okay.  Let me see if I can feed him."  He feeds for five minutes and falls asleep at the breast.  8:06:29 AM     Speak up!  []