Something to Hold On To

Needless to say, the last twenty-four hours have not been fun for anyone, least of all, Petey.

Elise and I took turns comforting Peter has he tried to fall asleep without his pacey. Elise stroked his back and hair as he lay in his bed.  She told me later that he looked up at her in the darkness and whispered, “Pacey gone forever?”

A few minutes later, I took over. Letting him sit in my lap, I held him until he fell asleep. Maybe he was just exchanging one vice for another. But what else is a parent supposed to do but comfort their child when they are in pain? I told myself, one night, a trend does not make. I knew I would not have to hold him to put him to sleep every night, but tonight it felt like the right thing to do. I told myself I would worry about tomorrow night tomorrow night.

He gripped his blankie, all that he had left, to him, burrowing his face in it. His mouth worked against something that had been there for the better part of two and half years and was now….gone. He smacked his lips together as though trying to work peanut butter off the roof of his mouth. He just didn’t know what to do with his mouth. It made my heart crack.

At 3:00 a.m. Clementine woke up to eat. She had a hard time falling back to sleep so I held her, too, until she drifted off, then lay her gently back into her crib. I turned the monitor off in our room and closed the door, hoping for quiet, but if there was none, at least Elise could sleep.

At 4:30 Peter woke, crying, begging for pacey. I couldn’t get him to go back to sleep. Afraid he would wake Clementine, I pulled him out of bed and let him lie with me on the bed in the guest room. I tucked him next to me, his body touching mine in at least three places, knees, elbows and head, possibly more. His eyes were wider in the dark than they were in the daylight. He chewed on blankie. This was novelty. I had never lied with Peter to fall asleep. He had always been the champion sleeper. It was Sam that we had had to coax, lie with, cajole back to sleep. Pete had always just rolled over and was out. Plus, he slept in his crib, so it had always been impossible for me to lie down beside him as I had so often done with Sam in his bed, my legs hanging off the end of his toddler-sized frame. So, it was actually kind of….nice…to have a slumber party with Peter.

Until Clementine started coughing. “Clementine awake,” Pete whispered.

“You wait here,” I told Pete, then got up to see if I could nimbly reinsert Clementine’s pacey and will her back to sleep.

No such luck. She had fallen asleep at 6:30 last night. It was now almost 5. She squirmed in her crib, glanced up at me and cooed. She was up for good.

And, of course, Pete didn’t wait there like I had told him to do. Rather, he had followed me into her room. Knowing Pete would have to go back to sleep lest he terrorize the whole house during his waking hours, I put him in bed with Elise. This is the first mistake I made, because evidently he never went back to sleep, just kept nagging her for chocolate chip pancakes.

The second mistake I made was letting all this happen on a Monday morning, when I didn’t have to suffer through the hellish product of my own incompetencies. Instead, I shuffled off to work, not knowing what else to do, leaving Elise to piece back together the damage I wrought.