I am upstairs. AB is downstairs with MIL. She is trying to put him to sleep. He is screaming -- the kind of scream where he's actually starting to go hoarse.
My heart is pounding, my breasts are tingling, and I just want to go down there and make everything right.
S doesn't want me to. This is supposed to be a dry run for tomorrow night, when the in-laws are keeping the boys so S & I can have an early anniversary date in the city.
I could not bear the thought of leaving the kids here with the in-laws while we were over an hour away, so we are getting two hotel rooms close to the restaurant where we have reservations. I think it's a 10-minute cab ride from the hotel to the restaurant. Much better, if we need to get back quickly, than a 1+ hour drive home.
But I am terrified. MIL seems even more inept with AB than she was with KB. I cannot figure out why. He is not difficult to put to sleep, although his mood does turn on a dime. He absolutely has to be soothed to sleep within 2 hours of waking up, or he screams bloody murder. MIL does not understand that and doesn't respect it.
A couple of nights ago, she completely ignored AB's sleepy signs (we had stepped out to pick up KB, to talk to his teacher, and to buy him some shoes). I had told her we should be back well before he needed to eat again, but at her insistence, I left a bottle just in case. Of course, when we walked in, she was giving him a bottle. She said he had started crying and she couldn't get him to stop. One glance at the clock said he was sleepy, not hungry.
I have horrible visions of her gorging him with 12 ounces of breastmilk tomorrow night while we are at dinner. I know she will keep him awake past his 2-hour window, and he will scream, and she will get all flustered that she can't put him to sleep, and she'll give him another bottle. Then she'll call me at the restaurant and tell me she's out of breastmilk and we need to come back.
Why did I ever let myself get talked into this date? My stomach is in knots just thinking about it.
3 comments:
So, how'd it go? Prior to actually having a baby, I thought that it was just overprotective mothering to be nervous about leaving children for a few hours so parents could go out. Now-- after we've burned through several babysitters and most of my nerves-- I know better. (I know better about all sorts of stupid parenting opinions I once held, actually.) I hope it ended up okay. I will say that I'm perplexed that your MIL won't listen to and follow your instructions. Personally, if the mother was telling me what worked, I would do exactly that. I don't like upset babies. Hugs. Hope you had a nice time.
I know all about the grandmothers thinking they know better. My mother reminds me of that daily as she tries to tell me how I'm wrong with my own children.
I hope it went okay. It took me a couple of days to read this because those first couple of lines had me feeling that knot in my stomach. I just took Max with me since he was so nonintrusive. I enjoyed myself much more.
You've been tagged! ;O)
http://ourladybugadventures.com/blog
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