Thoughts on Fatherhood 6

It was time. The baby had to get out of our bed and into her own. She just turned eight weeks and if that is not old enough to poop on the bowl it is certainly old enough to sleep in her own space. We did everything right. I gently bounced her to sleep whilst listening to Disney music through my iPod’s tiny speaker. The wife prepared the crib by removing all stuffed animals, blankets, and clothing. The baby went dutifully to sleep after approximately one and a half hours of daddy time and I carefully placed her in the crib.

This is when things started to trend downward. Almost immediately I realized I left my iPod in the room. This would have been OK but Pandora started to play the “Glee” version of “Don’t Stop Believing”, apparently “Glee” is musically similar to Disney, and it was rocking too hard for a child to sleep in that little space. I crept back in the room and the floor squeaked, I took another step and the floor creaked. Mercifully the room is tiny so I was able to quickly pick up the iPod and silence it. I snuck out of the room and, I kid you not, the floor squealed, “Time to make the donuts”.

Finally out of the room I closed the door with a gentle “click” and gasped a sigh of relief. I proudly walked down the steps and informed my wife of how easily I had put our child to sleep and as I got the last word out of my mouth we heard the baby screaming. This effectively removed the wind from my sails and I tagged out, allowing my wife to pick up the angry ball (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

My wife locked herself in our child’s room for the next 40 minutes at the end of which she emerged visibly tired but victorious. The baby was sleeping and it was time for us to follow suit. We entered our bed, which was now baby free, and celebrated our success in hushed tones. I whispered to my wife, “turn on the monitor, I want to see what our child looks like in night vision”. Considering I made her register for the expensive hand held unit I thought it was fair to be geeking out a little.

Unfortunately my technologically challenged better half could not figure out how to power the monitor on. After 30 seconds of watching my wife struggle, I wrestled the unit away from her and began banging on random buttons. I knew almost instantly that the monitor was busted but attempted to resuscitate it through all the usual means. I tapped the power button, held the power button, pushed and held multiple buttons at once, I even plugged the unit into the wall and tried everything all over again. When nothing worked I slammed it a few times into the bed post, but admittedly that was more of a stress relief than a troubleshoot.

When I finally decided all hope was lost I became nervous that we could not see or hear our child. I worried that she would wake up, feel abandoned and alone, and begin to resent us. My patient wife tried to allay my fears but had little success. I must have been convincing though because the second we heard “boo” from the babies bedroom we both jumped up and brought her back to ours. Everyone was sleeping in minutes.

We planned to return the defective baby device the next day but I had disposed of the box it came in, along with the receipt various other materials because it was super expensive and I assumed it would work. I gathered the monitor, the camera, and the power cords for each, placed them in a plastic bag and drove to Babies R Us. Expecting the worst my wife and I got our story straight on the ride over because confrontation makes me nervous. We decided “the story” should be the truth which was more or less; “this monitor is broken and it should not be, what can you do for us”.

Unbelievably, Babies R Us was receptive to our cause. The pleasant cashier looked at our Shoprite bag full of parts and ran down a check list of possible ways she could accept this as a return. “Do you have a receipt?” she asked with a broad smile. “We, I mean, I threw that out” I answered. “Did you pay with a credit card?” she helpfully inquired. “No it was a gift” I sullenly responded. “Oh, was it on your registry?” she excitedly questioned. “Well, yes it was” I quizzically replied. Unbelievably she then asked “Do you want store credit or an even exchange?” Before she could finish the statement, I screamed “Babies R Us for the win!” loud enough for the entire store to hear.

Ironically, even with the fancy new/working monitor our child has still not slept a night out of our bedroom.