Steven Wakefield gently put baby Emma into her cradle shortly after two in the morning. He always held his breath when he put her down, praying the handoff to the crib wouldn’t send her eyes flying open and unleash cries of protest.
Steven knew if she made even so much as a peep, his partner, Aaron, would be running down the hall and would scoop her up and rock her the rest of the night in his arms. And then she’d spend yet another night out of her crib.
Steven knew Aaron really did mean well. They both did. Both of them had instantly fallen for little Emma the day she was born to surrogate mother Linda Carson, whom Steven and Aaron had paid to supply the egg and carry Emma. They had both donated their sperm, and neither one knew who was actually the biological father. Not that it mattered. They were both her dads. So far she didn’t look like either of them, really. She looked most like Linda, her mother, who shared her light blond hair and pink bow lips.
The problem was, Aaron spoiled little Emma. Aaron had read somewhere that babies who were held more often were better adjusted or smarter or something, and so now he had it in his head that the crib was evil and Emma should not spend time in it or in a stroller. Aaron went around with Emma strapped to him all day in a BabyBjörn, and at night, more often than not, Emma ended up in bed with them.
So now Emma cried bloody murder when put down—whether in her crib, her swing, or on her play mat—and insisted on being carried or held at all times. It was exhausting. And easily avoided, Steven thought.
All Emma needed was a little bit of tough love, a tiny bit of crying it out in her crib, and she’d adjust. That’s what babies did.
Steven laid little Emma in her crib without waking her and thought Victory! as he edged his way out of the nursery. Near the door, his right foot landed on a stuffed cat with a voice box, and the ensuing meow rocked the quiet nursery. Steven cringed, waiting for the high-pitched wail. Emma just let out a soft little cry, almost like a yawn.
A microsecond later, Aaron was at the door.
“What are you doing? You know you can’t just put her down in that pink prison.” Aaron walked straight in and snatched the half-asleep Emma off her pink Land of Nod crib sheet.
Emma, now fully awake from the jostling against Aaron’s shoulder, started to cry.
“That pink prison cost us fifteen hundred dollars,” Steven pointed out. Aaron had been the one to insist on the top-of-the-line crib, and now he refused to even put her in it. The nursery itself was a designer shrine that Emma spent next to no time in at all, since every one of her waking and sleeping hours was spent in somebody’s arms.
“You want Emma to grow up to be a sociopath? Because that’s what you’re doing if you leave her all alone at night in this jail.” Aaron patted Emma on the back, and she snuggled into his shoulder and fell asleep.
“Do you want her to grow up to be spoiled and entitled like Jessica?” This, of course, was Steven’s greatest fear. After all, he had vague memories of Jessica never sleeping in a crib, either, and demanding to be held at all hours. End result? Well…Exhibit A: Jessica Wakefield.
“She’s not Jessica,” Aaron said, his tone implying that even the comparison was an insult. “She comes to sleep with us.”
“It’s not safe, Aaron. What if I roll over on her? What about SIDS? The crib is the safest place to be.”
“The crib is the loneliest place to be,” Aaron said, refusing to back down. “What kind of parent abandons their child in a crib? She cries when she’s in it.”
“That’s why you let her cry it out.”
Aaron just looked at Steven as if he’d suggested they ought to have Emma’s left arm amputated.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said as he walked down the hall to their bedroom.
Steven sighed. This is what happened when Aaron spent too much time with the granola-hippie moms down at the baby yoga classes on the weekends. What’s wrong with a baby sleeping in a crib? Steven didn’t understand.
When Emma slept in their bed, Steven couldn’t sleep. He was petrified he’d fall asleep, roll over, and suffocate her. He didn’t know how much longer he could take it. These days Steven was a zombie at work. He held a lucrative but demanding job as a junior partner at Leisten, Hartke & White. That was sixty-plus full hours a week of difficult work on no sleep.
But Aaron, who’d taken an extended leave from his job, was happy to catch up on sleep in the afternoons, when Emma napped.
Steven walked down the hall, dejected. When he got to their bedroom, he saw Emma was now wide-awake and bouncing on Aaron’s knee.
“Did that pink prison scare you, little sweetheart?” Aaron was cooing in baby talk.
“You have to be kidding me.” Steven sighed as he slumped down on his side of the bed.
“I think my princess needs a little surprise,” Aaron said. “How about it, Ems? A surprise?”
The baby cooed a little and clapped her hands. She might have been not quite five months old, but she already knew the word surprise. It was something Aaron had been saying since she was born. Aaron never met a baby rattle or toy he could resist buying, especially if it was wildly expensive and would be played with only once or twice. Little Emma had more clothes than both of the men combined. In less than five months, she’d filled all the closets in their house.
“Aaron, doesn’t she have enough toys?”
“Nothing’s too good for my princess,” Aaron declared, handing her a brand-new rattle from the bag of goodies he’d bought yesterday at some designer baby shop.
She promptly put the rattle in her mouth and gummed the edges.
“You can’t give her a new toy every day.” He plucked the little rattle from Emma’s hands. Yesterday, Aaron had “surprised” Emma with a plush rocking horse, even though she couldn’t even sit up on her own yet.
Emma grabbed at the empty air.
“She wants it back,” Aaron said.
“Not until she goes to sleep. In her crib.” Someone had to be a disciplinarian around here.
And then Emma’s bottom lip started to quiver and the waterworks began. Emma might have been a baby, but she knew already that neither of her papas could stand it when she cried. All she had to do was turn it up a little, and she’d get anything she wanted.
At these times, the Jessica Wakefield gene was strongly suspected.
In seconds, Emma had the new toy back in her hands, and neither of her daddies insisted she sleep at all, in her crib or anywhere else.
That didn’t escape Emma’s notice, either. She knew for a fact just who was running this show.
And it wasn’t either of them.