This Moment of Peace Brought to You by Zantac

For the past two weeks, the baby has not slept well. I can count on one hand the number of times he's gone down for more than 2 hours at a stretch. Or I could try--I might be too fatigued to make it that high.

Trapped gas, burps and farts, seemed to be a major contributor to the wakefulness. I have learned in the past few months that it's nearly impossible to burp a sleeping person or a screaming person. Moments when the baby is awake and not distressed have been few. You can't burp him because he's too busy yelling about the trapped air in his tummy. It's a very unpleasant cycle of suffering.

This morning, whilst searching online for new and better ways to burp my son, I came across a post that equated trapped air, "colic", and reflux.

I thought he was over his reflux. But perhaps this latest round of arching the back, pulling off the nipple, screaming, non-burping, waking up the minute he was laid down, etc....perhaps this was reflux.

There was some unused baby Zantac in the medicine cabinet. I put it to use.

Twenty minutes later I had a sleeping baby, and an hour later I had a relaxed and peaceful baby.

We walked all the way up to the Japanese Garden. I renewed my membership and we went inside. It was members-only hours, and we had the garden and the gardeners all to ourselves.

The baby was transfixed. Everything needed to be looked at very carefully. The light on the water. The way the water runs between the stones The braided straw insets on the sheltered bench that is my favorite seat. He could have stayed there all day.

A very sweet gardener with a gentle German accent saw me with the baby carrier. "Oh, is it hiding?" she asked. The baby peeked at her while we chatted. Her job that morning was watering moss. Doesn't that sound pleasant? Almost as pleasant as sitting with my baby, just looking at a waterfall.



Later in the day, I found myself lying on my back, feeding the baby, and...we started joking around, I swear.

The little guy looked at me with a glint in his eye, made a giant lunge for the boob, and we both started laughing. I wrinkled my nose. We cracked up. He made a funny sound. We lost it again. This went on for a while until he got hungry enough.

It's good to laugh, especially after these past couple weeks. It's good to laugh with the most precious 4-month-old in the world and feel that you are communicating with this little person.

He's in bed for the night now, and I'm praying for some sleep.