First night home

Many friends and family members who are also parents ask how the first night went. They do so with a certain sound to their voice. Is it humor? Is it sadism? They ask because I think they hope to reassure themselves that they aren't in this alone.

They aren't.

Max is a good baby. At the nursery, many of the babies wailed in the nursery or had pacifiers stuck in his mouth. Not our little Maximus. We were in awe at how lucky we were. While he was in our room, he made little puppy noises while he slept.

Yep. Max is a good baby. His parents, however, are still learning.

The first night was mostly our fault. When he made any noise, we freaked and went to stand beside his crib and stare at this strange, new creature who'd stolen our hearts and our beauty sleep. Was he swaddled correctly? Was too much fabric around his face? We'd taken the Newborn Care class and they'd said to swaddle him with arms out, but the instructor said she had to teach us that way due to hospital policy and really thought arms in was best. The books by Harvey Karp and Tracey Hogg said you should swaddle them with arms straight down. So we did that. He struggled and whimpered. Finally, we decided he was trying to get his hands into his mouth. He developed this habit in utero and we were turning his world upside down even more. No wonder our little guy was suddenly upset. Inconsiderate parents.

All senses alert, we returned to bed. His puppy noises brought us to his crib again. I'm sure this agitated him because we heard his first real cries. Garrett's and my confusion reflected in each other's wide-eyed faces as we tried to figure out what had happened to our sweet baby.

Simple. WE happened to him.

We turned on the bear that imitates the sound of the womb. We petted him. We held him. We changed him. We force fed him. Garrett turned on the mobile and, through clenched teeth, I told him that it was an "activity" and we were trying to get him to sleep. Yeah, like I know anything.

We crawled into bed and I realized I was cold. Gee. If I was cold with blankets on top of me, do you think our little guy was chilly wearing only a teeshirt, blanket and hat? We tried to emulate what they did at the hospital. Garrett suggested that they sometimes double swaddled him, so he set about doing that. Max was still upset with his silly parents.

My mom came in to help and suggested he simply wanted a pacifier. Our baby? A pacifier? No way. There's all sorts of material out there that gives sound reasoning for avoiding introducing a pacifier too soon.

I said, "I haven't disinfected them yet."

She said, "That's easy enough to fix."

Garrett agreed with my mom and quickly found the pacifiers to hand them over to her to get ready for Max.

In passing, she also mentioned that she always dressed her babies in a t-shirt and then a jumper on top. Um... that's what every book had suggested, too. And we'd not followed that advice.

Guess what? He loved the pacifier. He cuddled into his warm clothes. He went to sleep. And so did we.