Recently I was perusing my posts on a mother’s board, which I’ve become quite attached to over the last 18 months. I was pulling up all posts in the “babies” forum that had the words “sleep” and “hell” – there were, I think, 168 pages or something. Anyway, the point is that in the last 18 months, I have authored no less than 10 threads on various sleep torture. My very first sleep post was titled “Screaming Burp fest” and chronicled my trials and tribulations with regard to feeding, and our attempts to burp a starving baby after every 1.5 ounces. If you aren’t a parent, then perhaps that last sentence didn’t send you into fits of convulsive laughter. Let me explain. Burping a child after every 1.5 ounces of formula involves ripping a milk-squirting warm nipple from her hungry mouth smack in the middle of her dinner, (or lunch or whatever) hoisting her up onto your shoulder (or over your knees, or whichever trendy burp position is in style these days), and pushing the air out of her little stomach. Along with most of the food. Hence the title. Baby A was not a fan of these mid-feed burps, and was prone to scream as if being skinned alive until someone shoved a nipple in her mouth again. BabyA puked every single time she ate, after every single feed, until she was 6 months old. At some point, I decided that the screaming burp-fest wasn’t netting me less puke, and I wondered what would happen if I just- gasp- didn’t burp her until she was done eating! Would she explode? Would she keep us up all night screeching and clutching her stomach, staring reproachfully at us, begging us for a Maalox? Fuck it, I thought. I’m up all night anyway. She wants to eat? Let her eat!
And so instinctive parenting was born in our house. Needless to say, an eating baby is a happy baby and burps can wait.
Lets get back to the present. I would like to point out that for the last hour, my child, the same one who pulled me close, laid her head on my chest and gave me my first BabyA hug just a few short days ago, has been walking through the house screaming, snot running down her nose like the good rural dwelling poor kid that she is (we don’t say white trash anymore, it’s terribly offensive), clad in only a diaper. At one point, I mentioned the bathtub, and the cacophony ceased while I filled the tub with water and undressed said screeching banshee. I had visions of infusing the water with Eucalyptus Oil and Lavender, of scrubbing the sinks while my sweetie played with her super fun light up rubber duckies. Oh, but can you guess? Something about the water, or the toys, or the fact that I turned my back for a second to put the laundry in the dryer. I don’t know, but all the sudden a freight train of baby angst was tearing through our house again. Out of the bath, dried off and refusing to put on a diaper, she stomped through the house, wailing as if her world was coming apart; she hung off the sliding glass door handle and glared at me.
Now, I know better than to open the sliding glass door, Internet. I opened it yesterday when The Screamer hung off the handle, and do you want to know where I ended up? Watching fucking baby Einstein IN THE CAR.
Sometimes it’s hard to predict where instinctive parenting will end and doing whatever will make them stop screaming even if it involves selling organs will begin. I’ll let you know when I get back from Mexico.
You may be interested in these related posts:
