Usually (despite the wee-hours-of-the-morning battles that have become a ritual in this house) bed time is fairly painless for Dee. Darkness, Uncle Alex’s lullaby’s, and nursing are her cryptonite, and she’s usually out in a matter of minutes. Occasionally, if her gums are bothering her, or she’s having a bad poo, or she’s got the gas (sorry future Dee, but poo and gas are part of babyhood) she’ll fight for a bit, but even then, she’s no match for my wonder-boobs, and she goes down pretty fast.
So the other night, my folks came over to see Dee before bed, and stayed to have dinner with Scott and I. She was cheerful, there were laughs, and finally, 7:30 rolled around, and it was time to say Good Night. Heading in to her bedroom she was all smiles, but as I sat there nursing her, she started to fuss. Before long, fussing had turned into full-blown wailing. I called in reinforcements (Scott is the master burp-er in this household, so when gas is the lead suspect, I send up the Daddy signal.) Nothing worked. Forty minutes later, my parents were still sitting at our dining room table with dinner getting cold while Scott and I were sitting with a wailing Delilah on the floor of the nursery, trying everything we could think of to make her happy – begging, pleading with her to tell us what was wrong.
I told Scott to go start dinner without me. This could take all night. Right? Except it didn’t. Because almost as soon as Scott left the room, I had a momentary stroke of genius. (Sorry, did I say stroke of genius? I meant the most obvious answer to her woe’s imaginable finally pierced through the mush of my sleep deprived mind.) I took her footie pajama bottoms off. She stopped screaming almost immediately, and started nursing, eyes shut tight, thumb on standby for when she’d had enough milk. Cooing even. The girl had been overheating. (I believe this is what one might refer to as a Parenting Fail?)
I was so relieved to have gotten to the core of the issue, I started laughing. Sitting on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom in the dark, staring up at the ceiling laughing my ass off because really, what else can you do? [Well, you could NOT LAUGH AUDIBLY at your own shortcomings when you’ve just gotten your child to sleep, because that is the sure fire way to WAKE HER UP. Which I did. Because I’m rad.]
[In my defense, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how much I sweat these days. A lot. I sweat a WHOLE FREAKING LOT. So naturally, the fact that I myself was majorly overheating during this debacle didn’t set off any alarms for me that Dee might be feeling just as uncomfortably warm.]
Oh, and later that night, when I hugged my Mom goodbye, I found myself trying to burp her. Y’know, patting her repeatedly on the back, out of sheer exhaustion habit. Awesome.
Anyway, on a totally unrelated note – Sara took these pictures of Dee last weekend, and I had to share them, because not only is Sara an incredible photographer, but she also knitted the sweater Dee’s wearing. Seriously. She’s that multi-talented.
[Update: If you’re a knitter, and you’re interested in the pattern for Dee’s sweater, it’s available HERE.]
4 Replies to “Some like it hot. Some don’t.”