The good with the bad

The good:

My lovely thoughtful husband suggested last weekend that he would stay home on a Friday or Saturday night after I put the baby to bed while I went to see New Moon with a friend. He did not have to ask twice. This was the first time I've been out, really out, as opposed to fifteen minutes to the grocery store a total of three times in her life, without the baby. Since she never wakes up until her 3 am feeding after we put her down we both felt like she would never miss me and Dave would not have any extra work. It was the perfect scenario. I didn't know why we hadn't thought of it sooner. The movie was great.

The bad:

As I drove home from dropping off my friend Nicole at midnight, I received a text which read "Honey please hurry."

Oh hell's bells no. I called as quickly as my flurried fingers could type. Dave answered the phone in a panic. The baby was screaming like she'd been tossed into a blender in the background.

"She woke up!" Dave rambled crazily. "And I picked her up but then I felt sick so I took my temperature and I have a fever! and I didn't know if I should hold her because I don't want to get her sick so then I threw her back in her crib and she's been screaming and she won't stop screaming and how do I make her stop screaming..."

"Pick her up!" I bellowed into the phone. "Get her! Right now!" Our child has never been left to "cry it out" and the thought of her panicking in her bed not knowing why she was being abandoned in time of need made me start gasping and crying myself as I slammed my foot flat on the accelerator and raced home through the slippery rain.

The end of the story, which is neither good nor bad, except I guess it is actually pretty good:

Nearly beside myself and out of my mind with grief that I was out having a jolly old time complete with buttery popcorn while my infant was suffering at home, I fumbled out of the car and could barely make my feet work fast enough to propel me into the house and... SILENCE.

I slipped and tripped ridiculously through the laundry room to the living room and there was Dave, holding the baby, a perfectly content girl, cooing away at 12:30 am.

In the end, Dave had a fever for a couple days, but it wasn't the Swine Flu and the baby and I managed to avoid getting sick entirely as well as spend time with some of our favorite people, thanks to the kindly Hillyards and their lovely basement bedroom, which we rented for the fee of Our Wondrous Company.

*******

So while the movie was fun I might never leave home again. Maybe when she turns nine or ten.