First Play Date!

Today AJ is 17 days old. Out of my own need to get out of the house and connect with other people, we had our first play date with my friend, Corey, who has a daughter who was born in March, and Corey's friend Julie, who has a son who was born the day before AJ. To be honest, I almost chickened out of the play date this morning, because it was a little intimidating to get AJ packed up and to brave the half hour drive down to Corey's place solo, especially after he cried in the car yesterday all the way home from the pediatrician's office. I have a really hard time hearing the baby cry and feeling like I can't do anything to help, and when he is belted into the car seat and I am driving, there is really nothing that I can do to ease his anxiety. The only thing that kept me going was the fear that AJ would be two and I would still feel scared to leave the house with him.



So we sucked it up and plowed through getting out the door, which of course involved getting him in the car seat (lots of tears and wrestling him into the straps) only to have him spit up all over himself, requiring a change of clothes, a second nursing to calm him down again and the car seat wrestling routine, take 2. He did cry in the car, but thankfully stopped by the time we hit the junction on the Kennedy. In fact, he stopped crying so suddenly that I became worried he had spit up again and was suffocating in it while I continued driving along the Kennedy, completely ignorant that my own child was dying in the backseat. I could hear the newscaster for the evening news reading the lead-in to the story of my own neglect: "Suburban mom drives all the way downtown without realizing that her newborn baby is dead in his carseat. More on this outrageous story at 10." Of course, we haven't gotten around to installing the mirror that lets the driver see the baby's face in the rear-facing car seat, so I debated at every exit whether I should pull over to check on him. No, I told myself, that semitruck driver who just passed us can definitely see into our car, and surely he would have honked and let me know if the kid was turning blue in the backseat. Plus, pulling over to alleviate paranoid worries would make me that mom, and I was determined not to become that mom.



AJ was still breathing when we arrived at Corey's, which got us off to a good start for the play date. He actually slept through the entire first two hours that we were there while the other babies nursed (the newborn), and played and cooed (the 3-4 month old). Only when we were getting ready to leave did he wake up.