Just Put Me Down! (A Mama Kat Writing Prompt)

My Mama Kat prompt this week is:  I thought my child was going to _______, but instead he/she _______.

Pretty much every day of my parenting life, I think one of my children is going to do something a particular way, but instead they put their own (often completely opposite) twist on it.

This prompt, though, immediately takes me back to Tenley's infancy.

My first time out as a parent of an infant, I approached motherhood with the idea that if I just found the right thing to do when she cried or was otherwise uncomfortable, then I could give her infant self some relief.

She must have been quite young the day of this incident, because I was trying to figure out how to put the portacrib together. We were planning to spend the night at my parents' house, and I wanted to make sure I could figure out how to put the thing together without an audience.

The thing was so frustrating -- there were bars under all the cushy padding that were supposed to lock into place but if you didn't do things in the right order, they would not lock.

I. was. so. frustrated.

And the fact that my infant was inconsolable was not helping one bit. I tried walking her, feeding her, changing her, every infant-placating activity I could think of.

With the clock tick-tocking its way down to my departure time, I decided I would just have to put her down so I could figure out the portacrib, whether she was "happy" or not.

With trepidation, I put her down in her baby seat and within seconds she was sound asleep.

What she needed was to be left alone.

That was a time when I thought my baby was going to keep screaming her head off, but instead she relaxed and fell asleep. In her baby head, she was probably grateful beyond words that her Type A mother had just stopped trying so damn hard.