Little EC thinks that rolling back-to-front is fun.

She also thinks that, when she gets onto her tummy, she should play airplane, her hands and feet off the ground. This is fun for awhile, until she gets tired of it. Then she gets cranky.

She also can’t roll back over onto her back.

Most of the time, this isn’t a big deal. We move on and play something else. Except…at bedtime.

Since (it’s fair to say) I’ve been a rational actor for a couple decades, it’s hard for me to remember that she is not. She thinks rolling is fun. So she does it. Without thinking of what comes next…which is discomfort, then fussiness, and if left untreated, screaming, wailing misery.

So this has been our new pattern at bedtime the last few nights. I put her down on her back. Somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 minutes later, she rolls over onto her stomach, and has fun for awhile, being an airplane and beating the birds down to Acapulco Bay. Then comes What Comes Next…and I come to intervene and roll her back over, with a well-intentioned and completely not-understood admonishment to not roll over anymore if she doesn’t like it on her tummy. We could play this game for hours. And we did.

I tried putting impediments in her way to keep her from rolling. I tried sitting in sight of her and letting her know it was all going to be ok. I tried replacing the pacifier each time it was dropped. In short, everything I could think of, I tried. Except, of course, the thing that I probably needed to do all along, and that I didn’t really want to do.

So tonight, I just left her. Closed the door, went downstairs, and glued myself to the night-vision baby monitor that broadcast to me every desperate flail and the pantomime version of every howl. I ate some dessert, helped clean the kitchen, read a couple articles about baby sleep-training, and otherwise distracted myself for an excruciating 15 minutes. And when that was done, I rushed back up to the room, rolled her over onto her back, picked her up to my shoulder and gave her a good 5-minute comforting. After that, she had left off her pained crying and was just sniffling a bit, still wide awake. I put her back down, gave her pacifier back, covered her in her favorite fuzzy blanket, and softly admonished her to stay as she was.

Three minutes later, she was back on her tummy. Empirical Mom and I prayed through the screaming, and suddenly—quiet. I broke off the prayer to check on her. Too quiet too quick. But a visit to the room just let me hear the waning sniffles of a baby drifting to sleep…on her tummy.

I always thought I’d be thick-skinned about things like this. It turns out I’m a softie, and I will do every soft and gentle thing I can think of. But when all other options seem to have failed…then I get hard. And that is tough.

See, for me the process of waiting out the screaming wasn’t actually that bad. I mean, it was bad. I thought it was terrible. But then, I visited her after she had fallen asleep, and those little sniffles that she has, in her sleep, reminding me of how I had abandoned her in her moment of need when she thought she could count on me…those little sniffles are a thousand times worse than the screaming. I’ll put up with screaming day in and out if I have to…but sniffles!

There are a million child psychologists out there on the internet that say I just broke my daughter’s trust and gave her feelings of abandonment that will follow her through life. Perhaps. But I don’t remember being four months old. She probably won’t either. And come morning, I’ll bet she’ll be ready to smile and play her way through the day, just like she did before all this trauma.

Which just leaves us waiting for…tomorrow night. This had better be over quickly.