Friday, July 8, 2011

Do You Believe in Santa? How about Tylenol? Jesus?

Caitlyn is getting molars. I think. I mean, she's being an asshole and she's screaming a lot and won't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. That sounds like molars, right? Fucking molars.

Last night was day 4 of Caitlyn's marathon screaming at bedtime. It was exceptionally bad because the screaming started well before we put her to bed. I frequently take showers with her as opposed to giving her a bath and she usually loves it. Last night though, she spent about half the time with her head on my shoulder while she shattered my eardrums with her wailing.

She screamed for another hour before bed, but she finally did go to sleep. For an hour. Then she woke up and cried for 10 more minutes before we all finally went to bed for the night. And by "the night" obviously I mean for another 2 or 3 hours.

The first time she woke up, she only cried for 5 minutes and dozed back off. Another hour after that when she awoke again, we figured we would give it a few minutes and hoped she would go back to sleep on her own. That was not the case. After 5 minutes of ear-shattering screams, I tried to console Caitlyn and gave her a bottle. She refused the bottle and nothing I did could calm her down. That isn't easy. When you know your kid is in pain and nothing you are doing is helping... man, you just sort of feel like an asshole.

About 25 minutes into this ordeal, Rodolfo and I were scrambling for anything that might help. I even took a teething ring out of the freezer at 4:30 in the fucking morning because I thought she might want it. She did not. Then I realized that enough time had passed and she could have some more Tylenol. In case you are wondering, it's really hard to find an bottle of Tylenol at 4:30 in the morning, because Rodolfo gave up after roughly 10 seconds and told me to find it.

I found the Tylenol and figured I had another 15 or 20 minutes till it kicked in, so I laid Caitlyn on my chest and tried to close my eyes. She continued to scream. By the time 10 or 15 minutes had passed I was exhausted and frustrated- especially since I was taking care of the baby while Rodolfo went back to sleep. He is working a late shift today (meaning he can sleep as late as Caitlyn does) and I had to be up at 6:30 this morning. I didn't point this out right away though, because he is usually really good about getting up with her at night. Until.

Caitlyn's crying had jarred him out of his peaceful slumber once again, to which he responded "I knew Tylenol wasn't going to do anything. I don't even believe in Tylenol". That's right, folks. He doesn't believe in Tylenol. And who can blame him? Tylenol is a Scientologist.

My husband is Hispanic. He is superstitious. Once, when Caitlyn was only a couple of months old, he was convinced that someone had given her the "evil eye" when I took her to the mall that day because she was being really fussy when we got home. He immediately got his mom on the web cam where she said some sort of prayer to... exorcise the evil eye, I suppose? And did I mention the part about the egg? He didn't do it, because he doesn't know the "right way" (is there a right way to do voodoo?) but his mother explained to him that he should take a raw egg and roll it up and down Caitlyn's body. When he is finished, if he has done it correctly, the egg should be cooked, which would indicate that the heat from the bad vibes have been removed from the baby and absorbed into the egg. I mean, if my baby's body is hot enough to cook an egg, I'm going to take her to the hospital because she probably has some sort of horrific infection, but I guess it could totally be the evil eye too. But really, who needs antibiotics when you have an egg. Did I mention that she didn't have a fever through any of this? Evil eye is stealth like that.

So as I was saying, this man decided that he does not believe in Tylenol. Because, fucking TYLENOL people. Science and modern medicine is total bullshit anyway. Except for that time he had thyroid cancer. And appendicitis. But seriously, those were isolated incidents. If his mom had been in the country, she would have just cured him with an egg or maybe with the cancer she would have had to sacrifice a live chicken or something. I don't know how that shit works. I'm not a (witch) doctor.

My point (if I ever decide to make it) is that the comment about Tylenol pissed me off. It was the one thing that might have actually helped Caitlyn feel better and let us get some sleep. And this dumb ass is telling me he doesn't believe in it after 10 minutes of waiting for it to kick in so his beauty sleep is no longer being interrupted. I rolled my eyes and made a snide comment about how he's a moron or something like that. And he got ridiculously pissed off.

And then we had a fight at 5:00 in the morning while Caitlyn screamed in the background. That's what happens when you don't get any sleep. You have irrationally strong responses to Tylenol and snide comments and you wanna murder your spouse.

And now back to work ... the work of trying not to fall asleep at my desk. Fucking teething, man.

3 comments:

Mother Knows Best Reviews said...

I started laughing so hard with this that I woke up Alice. An egg? For real? If a sidewalk cooks an egg, isn't it, like, 115 out? That seems like a rather dangerous temp. But why would we want to treat it with a fever reducer...

Anonymous said...

This is one of the funniest blog entries ever. I found this by googling why there are so many curse words in nursery rhymes and children's books. I was reading through a book I received and saw words like horse cock and little pussy. It seems these words had different meanings in the 1500's. I had to read your post out loud to my wife. Wasn't baby tylenol discontinued?

Jaclyn said...

Angie- yeah he didn't think it was so funny when I mocked his egg theory. He got all pouty about it :)

Anon- Keep reading! My blog is still pretty new and I'm glad you enjoy it and I really hope you keep reading. And no, they did not discontinue baby tylenol. Or more specifically, not baby acetaminophen, which is what I usually use...come to think of it I haven't see the actual Tylenol brand around in ages... so maybe?