“Hey, John, it’s me, Linda. I just don’t know what to do. That Laura Mowery is callin’ up non stop. She’s demandin’ that I come over there tonight.”
“But you’re supposed to be over here tonight, Linda.”
“I know, it’s just she’s hollerin’ something fierce.”
What had at first been some fuzzy boundaries between when her job with us would end and when her job with the Mowerys would begin had officially become the Linda Quillen debacle. Linda positioned herself as a defenseless victim in said debacle, caught between two families vying for her rare and unparalleled services, genuinely stricken with grief both at the prospect of leaving our babies before she had finished her charter as well as that of making poor Laura Mowery wait for even another single second before receiving her invaluable help. I told Linda that I’d discus the matter with Laura and get back to her.
As soon as I hung up with Linda, I tried to reach Laura, but I got her answering machine so I left a message. Remarkably, she never called back. Even more remarkably, her mom called in her stead, a woman named Sue McBride.
Our awkward dialogue began by Sue explaining that she would have to be the one to discuss the Linda Quillen debacle with me as Laura was in no shape to engage in such a conversation. Things got a bit smoother after we discovered that Sue had grown up down the street from my mom when they were kids. She was good friends with my Aunt Judy. Then, after some generic triplet chatter, the talk finally turned to the Linda Quillen debacle. Sue told me that Laura simply couldn’t wait any longer, and that she had been misled by Linda as to when she would start helping Laura. Linda said it’d be around Christmas and we were already two full weeks past that. That may have been true, I conceded, but Laura knew all along that we were counting on having Linda until the babies slept through the night. And they weren’t doing that yet. It was what it was.
I pointed out that I cared about the Mowery’s plight – as a father of triplet infants, how could I not have? But at the same time, my primary concerns were those of my family, and what was best for us was to have Linda finish the job we had hired her to do.
Sue’s response made me wonder if she had heard a single word I had said. If Linda couldn’t start immediately Sue “just didn’t know” what would happen to Laura, pleading with me to permit Linda to leave our post early in lieu of discovering what scary and unknown fate would befall her daughter. Sue had never seen Laura like this. All the feedings, all the fussing, all the diaper changes – she was a nervous wreck, in desperate need of sleep that she was unable to get – even when Sue took over the reigns providing her with time to do just that. Our besieged mother of triplets sounded like she was in the midst of a diagnosable nervous breakdown and could well have used a little stint in a round rubber room with some soft music, a blankie and a stuffed animal or two.
Wonder how the thank you notes turned out?
My decision was one of mercy. We had at least a couple of weeks until Sam, Jack and Kirby would make it through the night, and not having Linda would complicate matters for sure, but we were obviously in a better spot than Laura was.
Could it have been the birth announcements AND the Christmas cards?
“Sue, you win – Linda can start over there tonight, but let me get a couple of things off my chest. I don’t appreciate your daughter calling Linda and putting pressure on her to leave us prematurely. We should have been the ones who were called. And while I empathize completely with Laura's plight, I'm not sure that you guys have ever fully seen things from our perspective. A woman we hired to do a job is leaving before that job has been completed so she can begin the same job for another woman she wouldn’t have ever met if it weren’t for the kindness of our hearts. I’m not good at all with how this went down and it’s imperative to me that you and your daughter know that.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, choosing to blow off my stern words, instead focusing on the news delivered right before the admonishment. “Tell your mom I said hello, will you?”
“I’ll not only tell her you said hello, but I’ll also tell her that your daughter poached our nighttime help.” Either the comment flew right over her head, or she chose to ignore it. We hung up without incident.
I called Linda back to tell her that she was free to go to the Mowery’s. It was the last time I ever spoke with her. The more Caroline and I thought the entire Linda Quillen debacle, the more we felt like we had been played by both sides. Linda had left on Friday morning with a blanket which she always kept at our house, taking it with her, she explained, to wash. But we think she took it with her because she knew she wasn’t coming back – she’d be at the Mowerys. And, inconvenient though it was, Caroline and I didn’t care, especially given the downward spiral we had been on with Linda in the weeks prior. We seldom referred to the Linda Quillen debacle from that day forward. It was over and we were moving on.
And moving on meant trying to find someone to help at night for the next couple of weeks. I mentioned the problem in passing to my mom, and true to her nature, she wanted to help. Unfortunately, also true to her nature, her help was a little impractical.
My mom is best described as a beautiful, eclectic and odd bird of eighty years who is as comfortable in her skin as she is wise. A highly regarded, cutting edge educator in the fields of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, her accomplishments read like a laundry list of forward-thinking nobility. She’s written more books than I’ve read and has visited more countries in her capacity than I have states within our nation. But all that brainpower doesn’t come without a kink or two. One was her proclivity to assume I knew people intimately whom I either barely knew or had actually never heard of. She’d litter such characters in passing during conversations as if they had been an ever-present force in my life. Often the names were comical ones – like Muffy Hendershot, a distant relative I had never met, or Hu Mi, one of mom’s graduate assistants, but even more often they rang like family as she would position virtually everyone under the sun as an aunt or uncle. “It’s like Uncle Woody always said…” Who in the world is Uncle Woody?
About a year after my dad died, Mom started palling around with a person named Paul Wilson, and though that name was neither particularly funny nor proceeded by the title “uncle,” she did falsely assume I was familiar with him. I must confess, this name actually was at least vaguely familiar – perhaps a former colleague of hers who was in the English department at the university? After at least half a dozen references, I began to suspect that she and Paul might be an item. I decided the next time his name came up, I’d ask some follow-up questions to try to get to the bottom of the matter.
“I went to a play with Paul Wilson last night,” my mom said casually one day.
“Ah, excellent. Did you enjoy it?” I asked, seeing my opportunity.
“It was wonderful.”
“Did you do anything beforehand?” I asked innocently.
“We sure did. We went to dinner at The Orangery.”
“Was it good?”
“I loved mine, but I’m not so sure she enjoyed hers.”
My mom’s suspected love interest was a French woman in her seventies named Paule Wilson. And as forward-thinking as Mom was, I was still pretty sure she hadn’t switched teams on me after her eighth decade of life.
“Listen, John, I may have a solution to your nighttime dilemma,” mom began after calling me back the night I told her about the Linda Quillen debacle. “Gerri knows a woman—”
“Mom, wait a sec. Who’s Gerri?”
“You know Gerri. The woman who cleans my house.” Not only did I not know Gerri, I was pretty sure I had never once heard her name. “Anyway,” she continued, “Gerri knows someone who may be able to help.”
“That’s great. Is it someone who’s used to working with babies?”
“Well, I doubt it. All of her children have been grown for sometime now.”
“Well, does she have any experience of any kind?”
“No, she was a librarian before she retired, but I understand she thinks babies are just fantastic.” This hot prospect was a seventy year old woman who made a career of hissing SHHHH when not busy admiring babies in general as a subgroup of mankind. “Her name is Minky Feigerly,” mom continued. “Gerri’s not sure if she’d be interested, but would you like for Gerri to have her call you?”
Would I like for mom’s housekeeper to set up a phone interview with a retired librarian who finds babies “just fantastic” to see if the two of us could carve out a win-win situation as it pertained to keeping three screaming infants during the middle of the night? Topper alert – a retired librarian named Minky Feigerly? Somehow, someway, we declined to learn more about the red hot Feigerly lead.
We did try another person, however, a girl named Bethany who came over two nights a week in addition to Sydney’s two weekend nights. We liked her a lot, but she came in late to the game, and the triplets were at a dead end – almost making it through the night, yet still only making it until four or five in the morning. After a short while, we stopped having Bethany come. Sydney kept helping on the weekends and Caroline and I kept them through the week.
Those weeks now contained a new face, as the Monday after the Linda Quillen debacle Brenda Whitcomb began her stint with us. We had tried to bring her on long before the beginning of that new year, as Caroline and I had fallen in love with her the moment we met her. Brenda was a mentally and physically healthy woman who I would have guessed to be in her mid forties had I not known better. Her shoulder length brown hair worn back with bangs went well with her blue grey eyes and dark skin. Brenda exuded an aura of rare and unique faith without any contrived effort. Having worked with families and their infants for many years, she knew more about babies than anyone I’ve ever met, making even Dr. Spock look more like Dr. Dre on the topic. Unlike our last baby expert, Brenda didn’t wear her knowledge like a cheap perfume, choosing instead to wear it as her faith – for all to see, but with grace. Caroline and Brenda couldn’t work anything about in 07, but had finally carved out a limited schedule in 08. Brenda would come three times a week for four hours a day. Her shifts were in the mornings before Abi's arrival as initially Brenda was brought on in part to allow Caroline to take Alli to school a few days a week as well as to permit me to leave for work at a decent hour. Almost immediately, however, her impact went well beyond superficial conveniences.
By the time she came on board, we believed our family was in a good spot. After all, most people proclaim baby victory when their little one finally sleeps through the night, and we were extremely close to that mile marker. But Brenda made us realize that by placing all of our eggs in the nighttime basket, we had underemphasized the days, inadvertently making them a lot harder than they needed to be. Getting Sam, Jack and Kirby through the night was born out of a desire to get them on a good schedule as quickly as possible. But Brenda reminded us that nighttime sleep was not the only key to a regimented routine. Daytime sleep was, too.
“Caroline,” began Brenda early one morning before my wife and stepdaughter had left for school. “What do these little guys do for sleep during the day?”
“Like naps?” asked Caroline. “We haven’t really started that, yet. We just put them down in their gliders after feeding them and hope they fall asleep!”
More like pray they fall asleep. Their incessant daytime screaming had served as a deterrent when it came to formally begining daytime naps. We were waiting until they became less fussy which we thought would occur when they were finally making it all the way through the night.
“What do you do if they don’t go to sleep in their gliders?” asked Brenda.
“Sometimes I’ll rock them in those rocking chairs,” answered Caroline, pointing to the cracker barrel models that sat in the kitchen alcove next to the side door. “Then when they finally fall asleep,” she continued, “I’ll lay them back down in their gliders.”
“Do you have a plan if they wake back up?”
“We just hold them and sway back and forth until they fall back asleep.”
“I bet we can come up with a better one when you're ready.”
Brenda and Caroline communicated well together, and they did so for extended periods of time like two detectives collaborating to solve a mystery. Unlike our previous midnight sleuth, Brenda worked in the mornings, but that wasn’t the only way our current top cop and former top cop were as different as night and day. With Brenda, change came about after a lot of questions and answers, not after endless complaints turned rude demands which were reluctantly met. Brenda was living proof that if you really did know it all, you come off better by letting others figure that out instead of insisting such from the very start. Brenda didn’t need to pound her own chest – we could tell she knew what she was doing.
Brenda was also different in that she wanted to help us crack the entire case – not just a portion of it. Her primary concern was the babies and their wellbeing at all times, not merely the time that fell under her watch. Crass turn times or bragging rights of having accomplished a task quickly didn’t appeal to Brenda. Our family did and she proved that fact by mapping out a way of providing it with happy, healthy babies 24 hours a day. With her help, we created a plan which revolved around two daytime naps.
Three infants sleeping peacefully upstairs during the day at prescribed times was the very definition of a plan – a design or scheme of arrangement. Our old method of rocking and holding babies every waking daytime hour? Not exactly a design or scheme of arrangement – more like being resigned to the dream of containment.
After both their morning and noon bottles, Sam, Jack and Kirby were allowed to play for a few minutes. Initially, they did so in their gliders where they were just beginning to interact with the various gadgets hanging from the glider handles. In a skilled progression, Brenda, Caroline and Abi began moving them from their gliders to their bouncy seats and then on to swings during play time. Jack and Sam sometimes even got to sit in one of the Johnny jump ups for a quick bounce or two. (Kirby was still too small to weigh the seat down enough to do anything other than hover perilously in midair.) These activities were providing daytime structure that had been lacking in their little worlds and set the table nicely for what was to come as after play time, all three would be taken upstairs for a nap. The first few times we put them down during the day, they went berserk the second we left the room. Brenda had a remedy for that. I was about to take Sam up one morning when she let me in on it. I thought I had misheard her.
“Okay, so after I put him down, you want me to do what again?”
“I want you to cover his face with this blanket,” she said, clear as day, while offering me an eight inch by eight inch cloth agent of suffocation.
“And what will this do, again?” aside from landing me in the pokey for 15 years for involuntary manslaughter?
“If you put this over his face, he won’t be so anxious the second you walk out the door. It’ll help him sleep.”
Oh, it’ll help him sleep alright. Eternally.
“Sure you don’t want me to just use a plastic bag?” I asked.
“Oh, John,” she said with a flap of her wrist and a chuckle – quite possibly a courtesy laugh.
“How long have you been working with babies?” I asked.
“Years and years and years."
“Have you always done the blanket thing?” I asked skeptically.
“Always,” she confirmed.
“How many have you lost to that deal?”
I went upstairs and laid Sam down as instructed, and though I had to fight my instinct to do it, I covered his face with the blanket and tiptoed out the door. He slept perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. He fussed a little bit but within minutes he was out. Jack and Kirby followed suit. And though it would not always be that easy, the babies took to their naps quickly. By the end of January, it wasn’t just the days that were getting better. The nights were, too. Sam Jack and Kirby were sleeping all the way through them.
Caroline, Abi and I hauled the babies back to the doctor one cold morning in early February for their four month check up. Sam was all the way up to 14 pounds two ounces and had climbed to the 29th percentile. Jack was a whopping 16 pounds and in the 62nd percentile – a mark his neither his mom nor I had ever hit in our entire lives. Little Kirby was just over 11 and a half pounds and was in the 9th percentile. Like last time, not only were the babies getting bigger, but they were also getting bigger as compared to their singleton piers.
Dr. Peeden asked us how Sam had been. I could tell he sensed that we were both concerned about him, which we were, though we didn’t talk about it a lot. Not even to each other. "He's good," I began, "but if we're both being honest,there's a sixth sense that sometimes goes off when it comes to Sammy." I looked at Caroline to make certain she agreed with what I was saying. Her eyes told me she did. "He's just so fussy and always seems so uncomfortable and he loses his marbles so quickly. He can be just fine one minute, then BOOM, the next he's banging his hands against his face and screaming like he's on fire."
"Is he still making the noise?" he asked. We nodded in unision. "Maybe we should have him checked for pyloric stenosis."
Pyloric stenosis is a rare condition that affects only three in a thousand babies, but is four times more likely to occur in firstborn males. It's caused by the narrowing of the pylorus, the lower part of the stomach that connects to the small intestine, making it difficult for food to empty out of the stomach. The resulting intestinal blockage causes great irritation. The only way to cure it is surgery.
"Does he vomit a lot?” asked Dr. Peeden.
“Oh yeah,” we answered simultaneously.
“Does he ever projectile vomit? That’s another symptom.”
If I told you we prefer feeing him in water-resistant gore-tex jackets, would that answer your question?
Another symptom was lethargy, which probably wasn’t the right term to describe Sam, as he didn’t frequently seem void of energy, but anything was possible. Perhaps his tantrums were a sign of frustration at having low stamina. Dr. Peeden didn’t believe that Sam had pyloric stenosis – more than likely, he said, it was just a bad case of reflux that would take care of itself with the combination of time and the medicine he was already on. To be safe, however, he referred us to a pediatric surgeon who could officially rule out the condition for certain with an ultrasound.
As we were packing the babies up to leave, Dr. Peeden had one final question for us that threw us for quite a loop. “Have you noticed that your babies’ heads are a little lopsided?”
“What do you mean?” asked Caroline a little defensively.
“They have little flat spots, Sam’s in particular.”
We looked in disbelief – Dr. Peeden was right. Caroline had always instructed me (and everyone else) to lay the babies down on their left side, as that’s the side the stomach is on. Sleeping that way would allow them to digest better. Only one problem – malleable baby heads. From the prolonged force exerted on the left side of their heads, Kirby and Sam had developed unmistakable flat spots on their domes, Sam’s being worse by a long shot. He looked like Mr. Bill after being tossed to his left, head first against a wall. Jack, true to his nature, was somehow unaffected.
We left the doctor’s office downtrodden that day to say the least. We were concerned for our little guys – Sammy in particular. Caroline took him to the pyloric stenosis specialist and thankfully, he didn’t have it. Sam was just Sam and his discomfort remained a bit of a mystery.
That left their lopsided heads for us to obsess about. Caroline took Kirby and Sam to see a different specialist, a man who actually designs little baby helmets for infants whose heads have morphed beyond a certain point. He told Caroline it wasn’t time for Sam and Kirby to wear such an accessory and advised her to start laying them on their right sides, but not exclusively. The best approach was to mix it up a bit. He believed the problem would eventually take care of itself.
During the next couple of weeks we constantly analyzed their craniums in hopes of suddenly discovering they were round again. With time, we thought they were getting better, but we could never be certain. Besides, what did we know? Not only were we the ones who flattened them out to begin with, but we also only realized they were flat after having it pointed out to us, reinforcing the lesson I learned on their first day of life – love only sees what matters, and the esthetics of our babies was low on the list. They were usually happy, well except for fussy little Sam, and now that the pyloric stenosis scare was behind us, all three were as healthy as could be. To us, they were beautiful, too, no matter what their heads looked like.
All the same, we were relieved to find out during the follow up appointment that Sam and Kirby would not need to wear corrective helmets. Their heads were back to normal. And thanks to getting through the Linda Quillen debacle and a few weeks into the Brenda Whitcomb era, our household was developing a 24 hour a day schedule which meant something invaluable for Caroline and me – our heads were starting to get back to normal, too.
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