In which I reveal myself as the terrible person (and hypocrite) that I really am

As you may recall, I’ve complained before about how Gus’s naps and Maggie’s preschool always seem to conflict.  I believe I’ve also mentioned the problem I have many mornings when I drive Nate to work, which is that Gus falls asleep in the car (inevitably within 2 miles of home) and then won’t go back to sleep.  Once he’s good and out, it doesn’t matter how long it’s for; if he wakes up, he thinks he’s had a nap.

Well, today, for once, I was going to get a break.  Due to a convergence of several different coincidences, Gus was going to get the perfect nap schedule in.  First, he woke up earlier than normal, at 7.  This meant he’d be ready for a nap between 9 and 9:30.  Still recovering from my stomach bug, I’m not yet up to driving Nate all the way into work, so instead, I just took him to the bus stop today.  Perfect.  He needed to be at the bus at 9, and the stop is close enough to home that Gus wouldn’t fall asleep in the car, so I knew he’d nap at home.  Hopefully, he’d sleep for a couple of hours, waking around 11, which would make him due for his next nap around 1.  Perfect again.  Maggie’s preschool starts at 12:45, and again, it’s so close to home that he wouldn’t fall asleep in the car.  Then we’d come home, he’d nap again until 3-ish and be up all on his own for us to get her at 3:45.  And I?  I would have 2 or so blissful hours entirely to myself; I can’t even remember the last time that happened.  And after we picked Maggie up, Gus would be due for a final, short nap around 5, which would mean he’d wake up about 6:30.  Again, perfect.  This is the time we need to leave for Maggie’s dance class.

All went according to plan for the first part of the day.  Gus stayed awake on the way home from the bus stop and napped right on cue.  Sure enough, he woke right around 11, so when we got home from Maggie’s school at 1, he was primed for a nap.  And I was beyond primed for those blissful couple of hours of alone time I was anticipating.  So I changed him, grabbed the excellent book I was right near finishing, plopped down in the recliner with the Boppy and nursed him.  And that’s when everything started to unravel.

I think I have to blame it on the book.  See, Gus fell sound asleep while nursing, just as he should have.  When he does this, sometimes he unlatches naturally, and I go put him down.  Other times, he just keeps doing a tiny butterfly suckle until I unlatch him myself.  Today was one of the latter days.  But I was so engrossed in my book, that I let him continue sleep nursing for longer than I normally would.

And then Nate.  Poor Nate.  Nate, who knew not what he did.  Nate, who I want to kill, even though it’s really the book’s fault.  Nate called.  Fortunately, the phone was very nearby, and I grabbed it before Gus seemed to awaken, but somehow, my hushed whisper, “I’ll call you back.  Nursing Gus to sleep,” was enough to send those little eyes flying WIDE open.  Remember that part about how he thinks any stretch of sleep is a full nap?  Yup, that’s exactly what happened. 

So I quickly hung up the phone and switched him to the other side, praying that somehow he’d fall back asleep.  He didn’t.  He was wide awake.  And that’s when I hatched my evil plan.

To understand my plot, I have to rewind to a couple of days ago, when something similar happened at naptime.  It wasn’t the phone, but some other noise woke Gus up while sleep nursing.  Again, he wouldn’t fall back asleep, so I took him to his room and put him in his swing with his favorite lullabye on repeat on the CD player and again commenced praying he would fall back asleep.  (I pray a lot for an agnostic/atheist, don’t I?)  That day, he babbled happily for awhile, then got silent, and I thought he’d fallen asleep.  He hadn’t, and after a bit, he must’ve gotten bored and started fussing.  I let him fuss for a bit, hoping he just needed to fuss himself out a bit.  He didn’t; in fact he started getting more worked up, so finally I gave in and went back to get him.  I was very tired (I was just starting to get sick then and the fever was knocking me out), so I decided to lay down with him in bed and nurse him, and whaddaya know, the little stinker went back to sleep.  It seemed that his fussing had tuckered him out just enough to make him receptive to nursing back to sleep.

I should’ve known better than to take a lucky accident and try to replicate it.  But oh, how I wanted those two hours to myself!  I was so close to done with my book.  I know it was selfish, but it’s been a rough week, a rough month, a rough year, and I felt on the verge of desperation.  So I decided to do it.  I would put him back there and let him fuss until he got worked up some and tired himself out, then I would nurse him in bed and he would fall asleep and perhaps I could at least get an hour or so to myself, and he’d get a halfway decent nap before it was time to fetch Big Sister.

The best laid plans of mice and men and terrible mommies, eh?

I took him back to the room, put him in his swing, turned on the lullaby, and trudged back out to the family room.  I called Nate and my mom to cry and whine and generally be a baby first.  Then I settled in with my book.  All seemed to be going according to plan.  Gus babbled cutely for awhile and then got silent.  I even began to hope that perhaps he’d actually fallen asleep, but of course he hadn’t, or I wouldn’t have rambled on this long, now would I?  Sure enough, he started to fuss.  It was just light, so I let him go on for a bit.  I mean, this needed to be “tucker the baby out”-caliber fussing, right?  I wanted him to get just to the edge of worked up.  (God, I am a terrible person.) 

And finally the point came where he seemed suitably mad, so I dutifully went to enact the next stage of my plot.  Poor little dude was all red about the face; those “stork bites” really show up when he cries, just like they did (and occasionally still do) with Maggie.  I laid down to nurse him, and here the first chink in my plan showed up: he didn’t want to nurse.  I wasn’t perturbed yet, though.  When Gus is upset, he needs to calm down a bit before he can latch on; this usually takes no more than a minute.  So I sat up with him, got him a bit calmer, and tried again.  Still no go.  Alright, I thought, perhaps he doesn’t want to nurse laying down.  So I grabbed the body pillow I used to use for nursing him at night before we mastered side lying and gave that a whirl.  No go: he was still too upset. 

I tried several more times.  Every time I got him calm, he’d start crying as soon as I tried to position him to nurse.  It’s almost like he knew I was trying to placate him.  So finally I gave up on the idea of his ever going back to sleep, at least not via nursing, and decided just to snuggle with him for awhile.  By this point, I was already feeling awful.  I never meant for him to get THAT upset.  Heck, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him that upset and inconsolable.  So I wanted to snuggle him and soothe him and let him know that Mommy was there again and hope that he’d forgive me.  As we snuggled, it was clear he was tired.  He wasn’t squirming against me as he usually does.  He was very still, but he was still hysterical.  Occasionally, he’d calm for a few moments, and sometimes he’d even yawn, but always he resumed the sobbing. 

But on the few occasions that he would calm and open his eyes, I could see it: he KNEW.  He knew he’d been abandoned on purpose.  That’s why he was so upset.  There have been other times he’s had to cry and I couldn’t console him for whatever reason – usually in the car – and he’s always calmed instantly when I got him.  But this time was different.  He knew he’d been deliberately ignored, and his little baby heart was broken.  My own?  It was torn to shreds with guilt. 

And what somehow made it even worse was that there was no accusation in his eyes.  He wasn’t looking at me angrily, saying, “YOU abandoned me.”  Instead, there was just hurt and confusion and the clear knowledge that he had been left alone and scared for no good reason.  Somehow, I almost wish he would’ve been angry at me.  Then I could try to make it up to him; instead, I feel like I simply destroyed his whole world order in one fell swoop.

After a few minutes more of snuggles and sobs, I finally tried to nurse him one last time and then gave up.  We came out to the family room, and he instantly calmed down when we stood up.  I thought maybe he just needed a change of scenery, and since he was calmer, I figured I’d try nursing him again in our trusty old recliner.  At least he’d sleep right?  He’d certainly been “worked up” enough.  No go.  As soon as I tried, the crying began again.  And it continued, off and on, for another half an hour.  Gus, my sweet, happy, never inconsolable baby boy.  He cried and cried and cried.  And it was all my doing.

At last, he did calm down enough to nurse, nearly an hour after I’d gone back to rescue him from crying in his swing.  Oftentimes when I nurse him, I’m multitasking.  I’m surfing the web or reading a book or talking to Maggie or watching TV.  But this time, I gave him my full attention.  I stroked his head with one hand and let him wrap his tiny fist around one of my fingers on the other.  I stared into his eyes and begged silently for his forgiveness.  Fortunately, his memory seems to be short, because the look of hurt and confusion gradually melted from his eyes, and eventually, he drifted off.   Now he lays here upon me as I type this, rather than back in his swing. 

Allowing him to sleep here, snuggled on my chest, may be the best, the only, penance I can do.  For whom I’m doing penance, though, I don’t know.   I want to beg forgivenenss of him, but he can’t even forgive me because he doesn’t understand that it was I who wronged him.  In the pure, undadulterated innocence of his little soul, he can’t yet understand that it was I who destroyed his perfect little world.  But nonetheless, destroy it I did.  I’m sure that may seem melodramactic to some of my readers, but you don’t know.  You weren’t there.  You didn’t see his eyes.  I did, and I know that his worldview changed today.  It would’ve happened one day, of course.  But it shouldn’t have happened at my hands.

And for that, I will never, ever forgive myself.