Sleepless Nights

Three days later, Connor carried Jacob through the front door in his car seat.

Amy followed with a hospital bag, two blankets, and the expression of someone who had recently discovered that leaving the hospital was not the same thing as being ready to leave the hospital.

Connor set the car seat down in the living room.

“Now what?”

Amy looked at him. “You’re asking me?”

Between them, Jacob slept through his arrival home.

“He seems confident,” Connor said.

“He has staff.”

For the first hour, they moved things from one room to another. Bottles went into a cabinet, then came back out. Diapers appeared beside the changing table, in the living room, and somehow next to Connor’s toothbrush.

At the hospital, every question had come with someone who knew the answer. At home, there was only the quiet house and the baby sleeping in the middle of it.

Then Jacob opened his eyes.

By evening, they had fed him twice, changed him three times, and disagreed about whether the second feeding counted as a feeding.

“He drank an ounce,” Connor said.

“He wore an ounce.”

“He drank some of it first.”

Amy sat on the couch with Jacob against her shoulder. “Did you record it?”

Connor looked toward the Surface.

“Livonne?”

“Yes, Connor?”

“Jacob had some formula. Around five.”

“One ounce at five twelve,” Livonne said. “Most of it landed on his sleeper.”

Amy looked at Connor.

“I may have mentioned that part.”

“Of course you did.”

That night, they placed Jacob in his bassinet and stood over him much longer than necessary.

“He’s asleep,” Connor whispered.

“I know.”

“We should go while it lasts.”

“I know.”

Neither moved.

Finally, Livonne lowered the nursery light, and they backed toward the door as if leaving a room containing an unexploded device.

At two seventeen, Connor’s Bedside brightened beside him.

“Connor,” Livonne said softly. “Jacob is awake.”

Connor opened one eye. The nursery camera appeared on the screen. Jacob was kicking beneath his blanket, working himself toward a cry.

Beside him, Amy did not move.

Connor watched her for a moment.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I am asleep. You have the first shift.”

By the time Connor reached the nursery, Jacob had found his voice.

“All right,” Connor said, lifting him. “We’ve both had a long day.”

Jacob disagreed at considerable volume.

“When did he eat?”

“Two hours and forty-one minutes ago.”

“Diaper?”

“Changed before bed.”

Connor warmed a bottle and settled into the chair beside the bassinet. The crying stopped with such speed that Connor felt personally accused.

From the speaker near the crib, Amy’s voice came through.

“Support his head.”

“I am supporting his head.”

“You’re holding the bottle too high.”

Connor looked toward the camera. “Are you coming in here?”

“No.”

“Then go back to sleep.”

“I’m supervising.”

A few minutes later, Jacob’s eyes closed around the bottle.

“Three ounces,” Connor whispered.

“I have it,” Livonne said.

“You don’t have to whisper,” Amy said through the speaker. “He can’t understand you.”

“He can hear me.”

“He heard me give you instructions too.”

Connor looked down at his son.

“We’re going to have to establish some boundaries.”

The next several nights blurred together.

At first, every waking felt like a new emergency. They checked the time, reconstructed the last feeding, tried to remember which side Amy had used, and debated whether Jacob had been changed before or after he spit up.

Then the details began to stay where they put them.

“Last bottle?”

“Two ounces at eleven thirty-eight.”

“How long did he sleep?”

“One hour and fifty minutes.”

“Did we already try the blue swaddle?”

“Not tonight.”

They still had to decide what Jacob needed. Livonne simply kept them from making those decisions with half the facts missing.

Amy learned that Jacob settled faster after a feed if she kept him upright against her shoulder. Connor learned that humming worked better than singing, though Amy said that might have less to do with Jacob than Connor’s voice.

When something worked, they remembered it.

When it stopped working three days later, they changed it.

One morning, Connor found Amy asleep in the nursery chair with Jacob against her chest. He took the baby carefully and laid him in the bassinet.

Amy opened her eyes.

“What time is it?”

“Six fifteen.”

“When did he eat?”

“Five twenty,” Livonne said quietly.

Amy looked at Connor. “Did you feed him?”

“You did.”

“I did?”

“You also told him the complete plot of a movie he won’t be allowed to watch for fifteen years.”

“He liked it.”

“He fell asleep.”

“Exactly.”

Connor helped her out of the chair.

Behind them, Jacob made a small sound and settled again.

They reached the bedroom before the Bedside lit up.

“Jacob is awake,” Livonne said.

Connor stared at the screen.

Amy climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over herself.

“Your son,” she said.

“He was your son five seconds ago.”

“He changes fast.”