Stupid parenting -- with audio, even!
I entered this anecdote in a contest sponsored by hilarious Let's Panic About Babies site, where they asked parents about an embarrassing parenting moment...
There was the cheery night after Sarah spent her first two days of life in the hospital gazing around beatifically before she came home and promptly got hungry as hell while my milk still hadn't come in. Of course I nursed her (though no more than every two hours as per the helpful schedule sheet provided by the hospital) so she couldn't POSSIBLY be hungry with all that delicious colostrum, but for some reason she still screamed like a banshee for hours on end. Ben and I were psychotic with anxiety and sleep deprivation. In yet another attempt to cure this baby of its mysterious caterwauling, Ben decided to change her again. And when the wet baby wipe hit her butt at 2 a.m... well, as we described it later, she bobcatted (actually it was a puma we were thinking of, sort of like this). Now the embarrassing part: in our psychosis, we immediately realized that Sarah's problem was... she was allergic to the baby wipes! Of course! And she needed a bath RIGHT NOW to wash off the HORRIBLE POISONS that were causing her to shriek uncontrollably! Oddly enough, the bath caused her to reach a new pitch we didn't think it was possible for a human larynx to produce. Finally in total despair and self-flagellation we reached for the bottle of sugar water that the pitying nurses had slipped into our bag. Well, talk about trying to suck a bowling ball through a garden hose... lo and behold, a few hours later my boobs were like Niagra Falls and she chowed down, I eventually learned how to feed her without excruciating physical pain on my part, and neither of us ever cried again. The end.
There was the cheery night after Sarah spent her first two days of life in the hospital gazing around beatifically before she came home and promptly got hungry as hell while my milk still hadn't come in. Of course I nursed her (though no more than every two hours as per the helpful schedule sheet provided by the hospital) so she couldn't POSSIBLY be hungry with all that delicious colostrum, but for some reason she still screamed like a banshee for hours on end. Ben and I were psychotic with anxiety and sleep deprivation. In yet another attempt to cure this baby of its mysterious caterwauling, Ben decided to change her again. And when the wet baby wipe hit her butt at 2 a.m... well, as we described it later, she bobcatted (actually it was a puma we were thinking of, sort of like this). Now the embarrassing part: in our psychosis, we immediately realized that Sarah's problem was... she was allergic to the baby wipes! Of course! And she needed a bath RIGHT NOW to wash off the HORRIBLE POISONS that were causing her to shriek uncontrollably! Oddly enough, the bath caused her to reach a new pitch we didn't think it was possible for a human larynx to produce. Finally in total despair and self-flagellation we reached for the bottle of sugar water that the pitying nurses had slipped into our bag. Well, talk about trying to suck a bowling ball through a garden hose... lo and behold, a few hours later my boobs were like Niagra Falls and she chowed down, I eventually learned how to feed her without excruciating physical pain on my part, and neither of us ever cried again. The end.
Comments