The Jumparoo Incident

Awhile back, I read this absolutely heart-wrenching article about what happens when a parent forgets a child in the backseat of the car. To anyone with any level of human compassion, this article would strike a nerve. To a parent, this article is your worst nightmare in text, but it also serves as a valuable reality check. We're all subject to slips of the mind and, as this article points out, your memory doesn't prioritize forgetting your child versus forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning. With all of our responsibilities, we are tired and distracted and, well, sometimes we're gonna screw up.

That said, I had two thoughts when I finished this article, in the following order: first, it would never be me and second, oh crap, it could TOTALLY be me. So, I took this as an opportunity to remind myself once again that having an infant daughter means you have to be checked in at all times when she's in your care. The days of wandering around the house on a Saturday afternoon and plopping down wherever are long gone. Unless she's snug in an Exersaucer or Jumparoo and you're only stepping away for a minute, you are with this kid engaging her.

But, sometimes you get so tired. Like this morning. You hear the cries at 5:10 AM. "Oh God," you say to yourself, as you stumble to her room. You light up when you see her smiling, kicking, and lifting her arms to be picked up. But, you're so freaking tired.

So, you pick her up, change her, see if she wants to go back down, but she doesn't. So, you feed her. And lately, just on weekends, you have discovered that if she gets up extra early, like today, after you feed her, you can put her in the Jumparoo, lie back down, and get, like, 20 extra minutes. She'll start to cry because, well, she's overtired and you'll put her back down and get another 45 minutes to an hour after that.

It's all going according to plan...yes...zzzzzzzzzz... An hour later, you wake up. Nothing. No jumping, no music from the Jumparoo, not even any crying. The sun is up high now. You look at the Jumparoo. She's in there. Motionless. Head to cocked to the side. "Oh God!" you exclaim. "Grace!".

"Is she OK?" Rebecca asks. We whisk her up, the stupid thing making a monkey sound as you pull her out. She whimpers a little bit and nestles into the crook of your arm. Of course she was OK. She was tired because she got up an hour early and passed out in her Jumparoo. But, all I could think of were those parents who realized they never dropped their kids off at daycare or the sitter. I was so angry with myself and felt like I let Grace down.

After we put her down in her crib (she slept for another hour after that), we put it in perspective and had a little chuckle. This isn't the first time we're going to make a mistake. The bottom line is we're doing the best we can and, in my opinion, doing a damn good job. Rebecca is an amazingly patient, compassionate, empathetic mother and I'm not the worst father. This little episode didn't bother her in the slightest. I've been told things like this are going to be immensely harder for the parent than for the child. Next time, though, I'll just wait to get back in bed until Grace is back down in her crib.