Ooof

It's been a rough 24 hours around here. Two nights ago, Jeff and I brought back some semblance of normalcy around the house by renting a video from up the street. We started by renting the first disc in the TV series of In Treatment. We figured this meant only a 30 minute commitment, which was hopefully realistic with Edie's sleep "schedule". That first night, Edie fell asleep attached to the boob, comfortably balanced on her Boppy, so we happily watched all four episodes on the disc in one sitting. It was nice to do something that we used to do, but to also be able to look down and see E sleeping peacefully. This experience got our hopes up, so we rented the next disc last night and started watching the first episode while Edie took a bottle. Well, the second she finished the bottle she flipped her shit. And continued flipping it off and on in 10 minute intervals for about 3 hours. At first, we would just pause the video long enough to sooth Edie and then try to start it back up again. But after 2 or 3 cycles of this, we gave up on the video entirely and focused on not flipping our own shit while shushing and jiggling the baby. When she FINALLY calmed down (about 3 hours later) we put her down in her bassinet and hugged each other. It literally felt like we'd just come out of a war and while we may not have won, we at least survived.

When Edie is crying fromgas pains and just can't seem to be soothed, I get panicky. My stomach hurts and it's hard to listen to; I'm torn between walking away so as not to hear it and needing to stand as close as possible to the chaos to try and make it better. It's funny, because when this is happening, I tend to think things like, "No baby should cry like this. Something is WRONG." or "This can't be right, there must be something we can DO." When I'm in it, it feels like no other baby cries like she does. But then this afternoon, when she started getting fussy, I popped her into the Ergo carrier and walked around the neighborhood and she fell right asleep, wheezing and sighing to the beat of my stride. While walking around, I thought of all the times my parents have talked about my Dad swinging me in his arms for so long that people told him he'd start to look like a monkey, with extended arms from his efforts. I remembered being told about couples putting babies on the clothes dryer and of parents driving around town for hours on end in the middle of the night to keep their babies from crying. And while this may seem immediately obvious to others, it suddenly dawned on me that they would only resort to those types of measures if their babies were crying like Edie was last night. Logic follows that perhaps all babies just flip their shit sometimes and sometimes it's hard to calm them down. This reassured me greatly.

PS: In Edie's defense, she is currently sleeping on the bed next to me like a complete angel (except I'm not sure angels fire off such ferocious farts while sleeping). We took two really long walks in the Ergo today and I'm thinking this may be the only way I lose the rest of this baby weight - out of pure desperation to keep her sleeping.

Us, right now.

Me strapping her in for our first walk yesterday.

Yesterday's afternoon nap (pre-flip-out).

Like her Mother, she likes THREE pillows.

Family nap time.

My little hipster. Eventually, I had to take the knee highs off as her calves were too fat for them and they were leaving indents in her flesh.