Oh. Dear. God.
The babies have been crying all morning. After an hour, I finally got Ben to sleep, and Luke woke him up with his incessant wailing. He’s not hungry, he’s not wet or dirty, he doesn’t even want to be held. He’s tired. Or insane. And he’s driving me insane. I walked into the bedroom to pick him up and walked right back out again. I was afraid I was going to punch him in the head.
So I did the only reasonable thing to do: I swore. Silently, of course, so Jack and Jane couldn’t hear me. Then I sat down and cried.
So much for supermom.
I knew this was going to be a hard week: my mom left Wednesday after being with me for two months. But this morning sucks harder than I thought it would. Usually the babies nap in the a.m. for a couple hours so I can hang out with my older kids, do a load of laundry, and wash a couple dishes. Not today. Oh no. Not today.
Today Luke is crying and won’t sleep, and all the rocking, breastfeeding, shushing, swaddling, and swinging in the world isn’t going to help him stop wailing. I hate hate hate just letting him lie in his crib and cry, but I don’t know what else to do. I have three other kids to attend to. They need to eat something. I need to eat something. I need to put in a load of laundry: we are completely out of burp cloths and baby wash cloths, even though I have about a thousand of each. Mostly I need to pray, but my brain is so addled all I can manage is, Jesus, help. Jesus, help. Jesus, help.
***
Jesus did help. He helped me think to put Luke in the Moby and helped me get him into the thing with patience and even a few soft, loving words. Luke’s still wailing, but at least he’s crying on my chest, so I don’t feel like a Bad Mom for letting him cry alone.
I’ll keep Ben, but I think I’m going to send the fussy one back. He’s clearly a defective baby. I want to exchange him for one with a mute button.
