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Sadly, Ava was not a fan of the bottle. It made her incredibly irritable, in fact.
Especially at night before bedtime.
I swear, it was taking me longer and longer to get her down each evening. I had struggled with her for an hour last night alone to get her to sleep, and she had cried so hard that I’d had a mini-breakdown myself.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, but nothing I tried seemed to make her feel better. I just knew I was going to lose my mind if I had to go through much more of this.
I’d even temporarily worried that maybe she had lymphoma like Duke had, and after I checked online to learn that, yes, risks for it were slightly increased if a parent or sibling had already gotten it, I asked my pediatrician about the possibility, only for my doctor to end up making me feel like some kind of helicopter parent with hypochondriac issues. And now, I had no idea what the right amount of worry for my child was in order to be deemed normal.
On top of all that, I received my first hospital bill, plus my mortgage came due, as did the water and electricity bills, and my cell phone. I didn’t have enough to cover everything. So I’d spent a good portion of the day on the phone with the hospital’s billing department, trying to come up with a payment plan that satisfied us both.
After all that, I was still going to need to ask the parents for a small loan. It was the one thing I’d been hoping to avoid, but once I returned to work and got in some overtime hours, I was sure I could catch back up again. Or I was going to have to take some drastic measures.
My gaze moved to the mortgage payment I had on my budget list.
I didn’t want to sell my house. Ava needed a steady, dependable home to grow up in, plus this neighborhood was nice. The school system here was above par. I just loved this place.
But if we wanted to eat…
God, adulting sucked ass.
I loo
ked down at Ava in her bouncer by my knee. She was chewing on the cuff of her sleep n’ play sleeve, and I couldn’t help but smile.
No matter what happened, it’d be worth it.
“I’d gladly downgrade my style of living for you,” I told her, as I abandoned the budget and swooped down to pull her into my arms for some serious lovings. “You’re my little bundle of joy.”
But when I tried to kiss her all over the face, she tried to eat my cheek.
“Oh, I see how you are,” I teased sternly as I stood and carried her to the refrigerator to get some milk. “Want nothing to do with the bottle but you have no qualms about trying to suck my cheek off, huh?”
After warming the milk just so, I settled down into the living room chair and started the feeding battle all over again. Ava turned her head away from the plastic nipple, but I chased her mouth, tempting her until she finally gave it a try. She cried at first and spit it out, but eventually, she got hungry enough that she drank deeply.
By the time she finished her supper, I was drained dry and exhausted, ready to sleep a straight twelve hours through.
But my daughter had other plans.
And thus started the new nightly routine of horror.
My mother had suggested that colic might be the culprit. Aunt Caroline thought she might need to be swaddled tighter while Aunt Julianna claimed her son, Cress, had hated being swaddled.
I’d gotten suggestions that I should get a white noise machine, or I should let her cry in her crib for a few minutes because she was being too coddled, or maybe I should try holding her more. And I’d tried all of it. But it didn’t matter; once a certain time of night hit, she resisted all forms of soothing, and she stayed good and pissed for no apparent reason at all.
By the time eight o’clock hit, both of us were running high on emotions. I’d just finished a particularly ugly crying jag, and Ava hadn’t let up on hers for a while now.
When the doorbell rang, I gnashed my teeth, equal parts wanting to rip the bell from the wall and heave it across the state and flinging the door open so I could throw myself at whoever was on the other side, demanding they save me from this inhumane torture.
Cradling my wailing child in my arms, I opened the door and scowled out at Vaughn who stood on my doorstep.
God, he looked good, so fresh and sparkling, like a crisp, new hundred-dollar bill, while I felt like a used and crumpled diaper. I could feel myself falling apart from the inside, and it hit me all wrong that Vaughn could look so gorgeous and put together and…perfect.
He needed to be as miserable as I was.
“What?” I growled.
“Uh…” He blinked, clearly taken aback by my tone. Then he lifted a small shopping bag. “I thought I’d drop by some gas drops; see if they could help with her—”
