Bye-Bye, Lullabye

Sitting in the living area of our loft and looking at the hard winter sun, I held The Poo in my arms and thought, “What was everyone talking about? This isn’t that hard.”

Mr. Chicken was out fetching ice cream, a particularly decadent sort made by a local creamery that I craved throughout my last trimester but could not eat, due to a raging case of gestational diabetes.

It our first day at home as a family of three.

***

The hospital was a strange twilight time, blurry thanks to exhaustion, pain meds for the ragged incision just above my pubic bone and arguments with the nurses over breastfeeding.

I longed to get home to my own bed, my own shower, but somehow I forgot that I’d be taking a new guest home, as well.

However, our first evening passed without incident, just a frantic washing and re-washing of the two bottles we had in the house. Although I fully intended to breastfeed, it just didn’t work out and we were left to make do with samples provided by Motherhood Maternity and the kind people at Enfamil.

The next day we called my mom and asked if she would bring over some more bottles for us. She showed up with a trunk full of grocery sacks, spilling over with fresh fruit, cans of formula, bottles, nipples and the makings for our favorite soup.

She came with sage advice, including this gem: “You know, you can run your dishwasher when it isn’t full, if you need to wash bottles.”

We watched from the window of our apartment as she waked to her car, her small form a black shadow under the street lights. We yawned, stretched and dressed The Poo in one of the nightgowns I washed over and over in Dreft, while waiting impatiently for her arrival.

We went to bed, and everything went to hell.

***

Thinking of my friends who put their baby in her own room the very night they brought her home from the hospital, we decided to put The Poo in her own crib.

She was sleeping when we laid her down.

***

The screams were amazing in their volume and longevity. The child did not sleep again for the next 14 hours.

Inconsolable, she wailed and wailed while we rocked her, walked her, shushed and swaddled her. At one point, we called my mother – I think it was 2 a.m. – and begged for guidance.

We took her temperature rectally – normal. She wouldn’t eat or be comforted; she railed against the indignity of her new surroundings as I tripped on my own pant leg, wrenching my incision and crying from pain and fear.

Around 5 a.m. she quieted, and her father and I draped our bruised souls on the living room furniture while the sun came up. I called the pediatrician, which turned out to be some practice other than our own, though neither I nor the on-call nurse seemed to know that.

She was fine. Just fine. A blip, a strange interlude that happened only once. But we were deeply scarred, and when we finally tried to put her down in her own room again two months later, we took every precaution imaginable.

We bathed her first, cuddled her and fed her until she was in that perfect state of neither sleep nor wakefulness. We set the space heater for 72, flipped on her nightlight, and cued the music.

***

A work friend gave me the CD – “Bedtime With The Beatles.”

Soothing instrumental versions of our favorite Beatles tunes, I hopefully flipped the “on” switch, thinking that the soft music would lull the child to sleep.

I’ll never know why she slept that night, but whatever it was, she didn’t wake until dawn broke at 6:30 the next morning.

I was a new woman that day, rested, finally, and ready to take on the day with a peace in my heart that I believed had long since fled.

***

It’s been about a month since The Poo asked me to to turn her music off after I’d put her down for the night.

A series of interruptions to her sleep patterns last winter left a new quirk in their wake; she requires the presence of a beloved grown-up (specifically, me) in order to fall asleep.

Each night we tuck her in, turn off the lights and turn on the music. I settle into her rocking chair, one in which my own mother was rocked as a baby, and read blogs on my laptop while slumber overtakes her.

“Mom,” she said one evening. “Turn my music off. It’s too loud.”

***

So many milestones lay ahead – potty training, her first two-wheeler, Kindergarten.

All the moments that parents hope for, savor and then regret. These rites of passage mean the child is moving on, taking strides further and further away from those who hold them so dear.

For me, it will be the silence in The Poo’s nursery, which is beginning to look more and more like a big girl’s room. Where once I held her and sang softly in her ear, now I stand a little to the side, hearing only the sound of our hearts beating.

***