The Night Shift

Taking my turn for a 4:30 a.m. feeding with the infant granddaughter — and surviving

At some point every parent is faced with the existential question: Am I genetically predisposed to keep this child alive? The same holds true for grandparents, or at least this grandparent.

This weekend, we kept our five-month-old grandchild, Marley, overnight. She is in a glorious phase, so very cute, smiling and gurgling and wiggling. (A lot of wiggling.)

The other times Marley has slept over, Jill has been the one to take the Night Shift because I’ve either faced a long day of work or have been out of town. This weekend, however, it was my turn.

Marley, much like her mother, is a very active baby. We used to say Kate was genetically caffeinated, and if Marley is not that, she definitely has some of those traits. She is endlessly curious and wants to be engaged at all times while awake.

Even at 4:30 in the morning.

Marley and Jill on Saturday afternoon.

Back to the Future

Taking over for my exhausted spouse before sunrise, I had flashbacks to the days when we had a one-year-old and two newborns. Again, I wonder how we all survived.

Caring for an infant, despite what you may think, it’s not something that becomes muscle memory you can access two-plus decades down the road. Perhaps it’s the brain’s way of keeping PTSD at bay, or at least that’s what I’ve told myself.

My most cringeworthy moment as a parent of newborns came when the twins were about three months old. Unfortunately, Ben and Emma were not on the same sleeping and feeding schedule and Kate — then just 14 months — was in full Tigger mode. (For months on end, Jill and I led North Carolina’s Central Region chapter of Insomniacs Anonymous.)

One night, Jill offered me $1 million — still not repaid — to care for the twins so she could sleep. In my infinite middle of the night wisdom, I decided to feed them at the same time and shuffled down to the recliner with babies and bottles in tow. I put Ben in one arm, Emma in the other, and stuck bottles in their mouths.

I then promptly fell asleep.

Probably no more than 30 to 60 seconds passed, but I was startled awake when one of the babies started coughing. My plan, I quickly realized, was flawed. Both of my arms had fallen asleep along with the rest of me and they weren’t ready to wake up yet.

Faced with two squirming infants and a spouse who by this point could sleep while freight trains rolled past, I was in desperate straits. Not knowing what to do, I slid my butt and back slowly off the recliner with each baby tucked in my numb yet tingling arms. Somehow, I managed to hoist Ben and Emma one by one onto the living room carpet, then stood quickly to frantically shake my arms while they looked up at me with a confused sense of abandonment.

It took me a moment to regain my composure, but eventually I gathered them back up so we could continue watching “Northern Exposure” reruns that aired starting at 3 a.m. on a local cable station.

The memory has remained so etched in my brain that the prospect of taking on the Night Shift again left me with more than a little anxiety, even as I recognized that Ben and Emma somehow survived that as well as other parenting missteps along the way. So did Nick and Kate, for that matter.

My infant granddaughter was calling. Her theme song: “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I need a bottle now, dammit).”

Off we go.

You’ve got this, right, Grandad?

How It Went

Somewhat groggily taking over the Night Shift, I started with the obvious: a bottle because 5-month-olds are still in the “input/output” phase. What goes in must come out, albeit in similar or different liquid forms.

It doesn’t help that Marley is actively teething right now, which only increases the volume of fluids, the remnants of which you later find in places you did not know existed. She also is somewhat congested, so it was obvious the bottle would not go down in a single sitting. And, as it turns out, she wanted to play.

Here is my play-by-play of the next hour and a half:

4:55 AM

Marley has consumed about an ounce and a half of the bottle and is giving me the look that she needs a break. A gaseous emission is followed by a goofy but heart melting toothless grin and the notion that now it’s “Showtime, folks!”

5:10 AM

Having performed a mash up of “I Want to Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night (… and Party Every Day”) with “All She Wants to Do Is Dance,” Marley is ready for the bottle again. Granddad realizes getting up from the floor is not as easy as it once was. Another 2 ounces is consumed.

5:24 AM

How you doin?

5:46 AM

We’re back at the bottle moments after Marley announces plans for her solo neighborhood tour with the thrash metal power pop group Chubby Baby Thighs. She plans to sample Billy Joel — one of her grandmother’s favorites — for the song “River of Drool.”

6:01 AM

Sufficiently burped, Marley wants to sit and stand and sit and stand and… You get the drill. Toys go from hand to mouth to hand to close to mouth. She bemoans her lack of fine motor skills and gives the signal that it’s time for a little bit more on the bottle side.

6:12 AM

Attempts to broker a sleep treaty with said grandchild are met with casual indifference. Marley seems to be enjoying playtime with granddad, not realizing that she needs to sleep before embarking on her solo tour.

6:24 AM

Knocked out. Sunrise neighborhood solo music tour postponed.

At this moment, she’s peacefully in my arms, snoring like the driver of a Hot Wheels dump truck. It’s obvious she is dreaming as she gurgles and smiles. Soon Jill will be downstairs, and the day will begin with taking out the dog (larger size, same maturity level, toys very similar).

For now, I’m content to look at my granddaughter.

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Two things this reinforced to me about parenting: 1) At times, the days and nights with babies (and kids in general) can seem unbearably long, but the months and the years go by incredibly fast. And (2) there’s nothing more beautiful and peaceful than a sleeping child.

Marley checking out possible band name ideas in Sunday’s New York Times.

Here are a few more photos of the cutie from this weekend…