Drive Time Momma

It's dark out. I'm tired. As I sit in my car driving the baby around so that Eric can get his homework, I have to wonder, "How did it come to this?"

It all started last night around well... I think it was somewhere close to midnight. Jenna decided that she desperately needed food. Screaming. Crying. I sent Eric in to do his duty as the first shift person of the night but of course I couldn't sleep with her screaming. He fed her and she went down, all is well. Or so I thought. At around 1:30 the babe wakes again. Screaming. Crying. Hungry. I know this as her hungry cry and not a tantrum cry so I go in and feed her. She falls asleep.

Around 2:30 the baby is awake again. Screaming. Crying. Hungry. What the heck? I am not in the mood for this! I get up and feed her. She gulps down food like a mad lady baby and falls asleep again. I think she woke up at 3 and 4 and 5 and I don't know but this momma didn't get much sleep last night. Thankfully one or two of those times Eric woke up, well I forced him awake, and he fed her.

All day today she was super fussy. She only took 40 minute naps, two of them. The rest of the time was spent screaming and crying. Sometimes when she wasn't eating she was happy and playful. Generally she wasn't happy with whatever I decided to do with her. It wore on me so bad! Sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out! I pray to God (literally) that He can calm her cause I can't. At times she calmed, other times she still screamed and cried.

Let me tell you, that coupled with my lack of sleep is NOT a good combo. It's all I could do not to punch a wall or scream at her, no wait.. I think I did yell at her once, maybe twice. I know she's a baby and she cries cause that's how she communicates but man, what if I don't want to communicate with her? Some people say to leave the babies in their cribs when you feel like you've lost it so that you can go collect yourself. I don' t know how you can collect yourself when there's a baby screaming in the other room. That kinda drives me more batty. Believe me, I've tried.

So tonight, Eric waited until the last minute to complete his homework assignment. My parents are coming into town tomorrow and because I've had a screaming infant all day, I haven't had the time to prepare things for them like I wanted. To help Eric have time to work on his homework I decided to take Jenna and drive around with her for a couple of hours. It's all I can do to help get her out of the house so that he can have some peace to complete his assignment.

So I drove. I drove for over 2 hours in blissful silence. Even though the car was silent, my mind was loud with thought. I came home to find Eric, still working on homework.

Jenna woke up and started screaming and I started to remember why I decided to take that drive. I changed her and fed her and put her down in her crib to sleep. She's kinda sleeping right now. We'll see how long that lasts!