Friday, June 10 . . . when you miss your baby

or "an funny thing happened on the way to bed."

So this week, the nighttime routine has been:

Dad gets home around 6 and has either "screaming baby time" or "happy baby time", depending on whether he gets home at 6:01 or 6:05. He holds/rocks/bounces/plays with baby while Mom prepares dinner, and the mom and dad either eat in shifts, or if baby is asleep we can eat together. Around 8:00-8:30, Dad gives baby a bottle and Mom double-pumps. Then Dad burps baby, hopefully has some happy time, and bounces baby to sleep. Here comes the tricky part: we put baby down to "nap" in the pack n' play, and he'll either 1) sleep for 20 minutes and then scream for an hour, or 2) sleep until the middle of the night feeding.

A few nights ago, he was still asleep when it was time for us to go to bed, so we left him in the pack n' play and went to bed with the door open, sure that I would hear him crying and wake up. And I did hear him crying . . . unfortunately rather than waking up, I simply integrated the cry into the dream I was having. Oops.

Last night, he again was still asleep when it was time to go to bed, and since we're in the middle of a heat wave, we have to shut the bedroom door and keep the A/C on. So we set up the baby monitor in the living room and went to bed.

And I was a wreck.

The simple act of shutting the door felt like I had left my baby in the basement, or out in the yard, or on a Subway headed to Brooklyn. I was immediately convinced that he had pulled him swaddle blanket over his face and was, at that moment, choking to death. And of course the baby monitor would not pick up choking, because in order to choke, you have no air to make noise! So after a few minutes of panic and irrational mothering, I went to check on him. I am such a cliche. I seriously was creeping around in the dark, hovering over his bed, checking to make sure he was breathing. But honestly, it made me feel better, and I was able to go to sleep.

When he woke up around 2:30am, I was actually glad to get up and feed him. I had MISSED him!