My Son : The Furball

Several of my friends have recently joined the world of motherhood, an exclusive club, full of advice and unsolicited opinions. The further a mommy travels in her journey of motherhood, the more she eventually appreciates the sage wisdom, “This, too, shall pass.” Colic? This, too, shall pass. Expensive formula? This, too, shall pass. Having to carry an extra outfit everywhere you go for both the child and yourself? This, too, shall pass (maybe). Sleepless nights…well…

I read a Facebook post by one of my friends, who had her baby last week. She asked her friends if it was normal for her to be so sleepy but so unable to sleep. It reminded me of the first three months of Baker’s life and all of our battles, which, among other things, included very little sleep.

Before Baker was three months old, we purchased five different types of beds for him, in hopes that one of these beds would help him to sleep better. By the time the child was three days old, I was absolutely convinced that I had given birth to an asthmatic goat. Each night, we would swaddle him, and we would lay him in his swing, which was situated at the foot of our bed, and Baker’s erratic symphony would begin. It was a melody of alternating short and long bahhhh-ing sounds, interrupted with an occasional chorus of short shrieks, gasps, coughs, and sighs. His pediatrician later told me that this was acid reflux, and the magic of modern day medicine turned my baby goat into a real boy.

Sometimes Baker’s tangents would be abruptly shattered by a fussy cry that Dave and I began to call, squiggy. I don’t know where squiggy came from, but it describes the squished up face that he would make and the way that he would stretch and wiggle his body from side to side. On the night that today’s story takes place, Baker was being very squiggy. And I was very tired. And Dave was very asleep.

Baker began to fuss and squirm, and I, believing that every cry that came from my child was an absolute emergency (as new mommies do), sprang to action. By sprang to action, I mean that I sat up in a dumbfounded haze and crawled to the foot of the bed to pick up my baby goat.

I should note that my brain is not fully functional until I have been awake for at least an hour and even then, there are those who question my definition of fully functional. I am also blind. Very very blind. My glasses prescription is similar to that of my 87 year old grandmother, sans bifocals. But when your child is having an emergency and must eat right away or risk starvation, you don’t think to grab your glasses…at least, I didn’t.

“Shhhh, Bubba, you’re okay. Shhhh.” I stroked the top of his head and kissed him. “Mommy is right here. Shhhhh. You’re okay.”

Baker cranked up the volume a bit, and I reached for his bottle. Shifting Baker in my arms in order to get him into a position where I could both feed him and rest my head against our headboard, I noticed something. It was something strange. It felt like hair, much, much more hair than Baker, who at the time resembled an 8 lb. Danny DiVito, had.

Maybe it was his blanket. I glanced into his swing to see blurry outlined shape the blanket carelessly draped and dangling from the bottom of the swing.

By this time Baker was really angry. He belted his high notes as I tried to get the bottle into his mouth, but I couldn’t see his face, and he wouldn’t quit squirming. The more he squirmed, the more hair I felt.

“Is it my hair?” I wondered. It couldn’t be.

In my immensely sleep-deprived wisdom, I concluded that my baby had come into contact with an allergen, causing him to sprout massive amounts of hair all over his body.

No wonder he was crying!

“It’s okay, baby!” I kissed him, and in a panic, I rushed back over to the foot of the bed to investigate the contents of his swing and determine why my baby was so furry. After all, I’d only joked about Baker being a goat because of the sounds he was making, and now he was growing fur, too! What kind of jacked up genetics was this???

Searching through Baker’s swing, I found more than one answer.

Answer 1: The first thing I felt was the soft skin of a very ticked off newborn, now shrieking like a rabid cat. I shook the fog from my brain and looked closer. Sure enough, there was my son, laying in his swing, mouth wide open, screaming his brains out.

Answer 2: In utter confusion, still not comprehending exactly what was happening, I looked down into my arms. “If Baker is there, what am I holding?” A closer look revealed to me my ten-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, Bailey, who was now embracing the luxury of being held like a baby, stroked, and kissed.

Answer 3: Sleep deprivation ain’t cool.

As Baker has gotten older, he has learned to sleep through the night, and he is really great about it. But I have resigned myself to the idea that “sleeping in” is a thing of the past. Some things in life do pass, but some things stick around and evolve.