My first blog ever, you may recall, I questioned my abilities to post anything about parenting an easy to love but hard to raise child.  You see, my doubts of parenting were tested right out of the “gates” when our 2nd child, Spitfire, was born.  Firefighting 101 classes began for me while we were leaving the hospital.

“Oh, honey!” said the sweet voice of the nurse wheeling us to our car, “Bless his little heart, he was the loudest baby of the bunch.  His lungs are mighty strong!  We all wish you the best.”

I wanted to ask why, but thank-you was all that came out. It didn’t matter anyway. Spitfire began whaling the second we put him in his brand new, not a hand me down from his older sister, car seat.   We instantly understood the words of that sweet nurse.

Lesson #2:

Spitfire was four days old when we brought him home, his room was decked out in everything baseball and his bed set represented his dad’s favorite baseball team.  We were ready; our first child slept in her crib the first night home and that was our plan for our second child.  As life goes, our plan didn’t work out as planned; he never calmed down from the car ride home.

He cried through the feedings, I cried through the feedings, he cried through the burpings, I sulked through the burpings, He screamed through the changings, I panicked through the changings, he threw up on the swaddling and I threw up while cleaning up the swaddling.  Just like the directions on the back of a shampoo bottle, WASH, RINSE, REPEAT, only louder!  Spitfire could not be calmed, I tried singing to him while rocking, just singing or just rocking him. Ok, singing I can understand but rocking, come on, I am a pretty good rocker.  In my high school days, I was well known for my rendition of Stairway to Heaven on my air guitar!  Ah humor, if we didn’t laugh we would cry and laughing is much more “funner”.

Specialists, Doctors, Lawyers, Bakers, Homemakers, Neighbors, even children had tried to help calm our little Spitfire down. We even recruited his very mature 3 year old sister. NO LUCK. Yes, we pulled out our water supply pretty quick on this fire.  We were one more sleepless night from having the nice young men in their nice white coats come to take us away.  I was desperate for some sort of relief on this blaze. The opinions from all were unanimous, Colic!  Their advice, however, not the same…leg bends to relieve excess gas; it worked for me, not so much on Spitfire.  Massage belly, feed slower, burp more often, sit him up, lay him down, no on his side, no on his belly, no on his back, put him on the dryer…not in!  This helpful advice was overwhelming and not working.

Our only option was to reel in our water source and reload. The key word here is “reload”. This inferno was not going to be put out by just 2 worn out firefighters; it was time to call in for back-up and by back-up I mean hands on, get your feet wet back-up.  Not the kind that willing gives you fire safety tips by phone but actual back-up that is willing to enter the burning building to rescue all that needed to be rescued without judgment.

My sister-n-law suited up in her fire proof gear and entered our towering inferno. Our back-up, to this day, will still show up, suit up and enter our inferno. When you find that back-up, you know your water supply will never run dry.

Unfortunately, all fires are not this clear cut!  Stay tuned…