Wednesday, June 07, 2006

The Horror

Last night when I entered Georgia's room to wake her up from her afternoon nap (not the 2 hour morning nap, the 3 hour afternoon nap - just had to throw that in there;), I saw something that struck a terror in my heart. Something that turns every mother of a young child into a quivering ball of nerves and makes her heart race in fear. It is frightening, actually. Terrifying.

Georgia had spit up on her crib sheet.
Not the kind of spit up that you can quietly ignore and pretend is not there and allow to dry and no one will ever know that it exists. The kind of spit up that has a color to it, cannot be ignored and (here is the terrifying part) requires an immediate change of the sheet.

You KNOW what I'm talking about. If you're a little, ahem, older and don't know why this is so terrifying, let me just tell you that in order to change a crib sheet one is required to spend much time contemplating the best course of action, then when a decision is made the acrobats begin...

First, when faced with an immediate sheet change (or any crib sheet change for that matter) one must decided: Do I leave the crib bumper on and attempt to change the sheet with it in place OR do I take the time to untie all (22) ties that hold the bumper in place and retie them and refit the bumper once the sheet has been changed?

Once that decision has been made the next decision is: Do I leave the mattress in the crib or do I try to wrestle the entire mattress out (PAST the bumper if you opted to leave it on) and put the sheet on outside of the crib and try to replace the mattress?

Having made those two very important decisions, it is time to stretch and get into proper position. One must be very limber and very stretchy in order to properly change a crib sheet. This is not something one should attempt while out of shape, overly tired or under the influence of any type of altering medication. Full attention and focus is requred in all crib sheet changes. Okay, stretching completed and it starts:

Put the corner of the sheet on the corner of the mattress. Good. Stretch the next corner of the sheet onto the next corner of the mattress. Piece of cake. Go to other side of the crib... put corner of sheet on corner of mattress. Crap - the sheet on the original corner just pulled off. Okay, go back to original corner and replace sheet on mattress. Great, now the other corner pulled off. Go back to the third corner, try again. This continues on and on until there is a puddle of sweat on the floor and the dog is trying to lick it up. Now, after successfully stretching all corners of the sheet onto all corners of the mattress it is time to stick your fingers into places that were never meant to have fingers stuck - the area between the mattress and the spindles of the crib. By doing this, one is attempting to pull the sheet down to the bottom of the mattress to fully cover the depth of the mattress and make it look nice. ATTEMPT - keyword. An hour later, while wiping the sweat off of your forehead, you look at your screaming child (who is crying because you have ignored her for way too long while trying to make her bed clean) and pick her up, leave the room, shut the door and vow to only return when it is dark and you cannot see the sheet or the spit up if it exists.

At some point - or several points - during this entire process you curse yourself for choosing to leave the bumper on and leave the mattress in the crib.

9 comments:

kkoois 10:38 PM  

next time just throw a hand towel over it and pretend it doesn't exist...

Anonymous 2:39 PM  

After all that I think I'll go take a nap, I'm beat! LOL

Jen 11:56 AM  

Funny you should post that! Just had the exact same scenario~only coming out the other end so I couldn't "throw a hand towel over it"

Someone I know suggested putting 3 crib sheets on at a time so if one gets icky you can just peel it off. That'd be great if I owned more than one crib sheet. . .

Anonymous 10:35 PM  

Girlfriend, DITCH the bumper pads. When my first child was born, & I had the pediatrician from Hell (really, I have his address) - I heeded ALL of his "do & don't" advice. One of them was to ditch the bumper pads when the baby was old enough to pull up or thereabouts. I think his thinking was that the ties became a hazard possibility. Anyway, I did it. Baby #2, different pediatrician (I went thru 3 before I found our INCREDIBLE pediatrician we have now:), never said a word. Left bumper pads on until one tore. Baby #3, & yet another & FINAL pediatrician, never said a word either about removing them. However, because of what you just described, I heeded pediatrician #1's advice & ditched those puppies! I've discovered I hate them. LOL! Life is much easier now. You crack me up! :)

Jen 1:29 PM  

But if you have little pacifier addicts like mine, you can't ditch the bumper pads. Cuz then the pacis hit the floor!

Ahh, the joys of motherhood. :-)

kkoois 2:23 PM  

and you can't ditch them if you have a monkey like mine who at least 3 times a week gets her leg twisted up in the crib bars...

Anonymous 10:22 AM  

I had 3 crib sheets and would make the crib with all 3 of them. That way I didn't have to go through that near as often! I read something somewhere about the bumper pad being a choking hazard after a certain point. I don't know if there's any merit to that or not, but that is why I ditched the bumper pad. And the pacifier issue-if you put like 6 or 7 pacifiers in the crib, they can usually et there hand on one of them during the night!

i am not 12:14 PM  

Carrie - we did exactly that with Nora when she was a baby - we put every pacifier we could find in her crib so she could just find one on her own during the night. It worked great - HOWEVER, pretty soon she needed not only 1 pacifier to fall asleep, but 3 - one in her mouth, one in each hand. We had to make sure we had 3 pacifiers with us any time we went anywhere that she might need to go to bed. Thats not such a bad problem, but having to wean a child from 3 pacifiers instead of just 1 was definitely a larger hassle than it was probably worth:) We try to learn from our mistakes and only allow 1 pacifier in bed at a time with Ryann. Georgia, though, gets a bed full of pacifiers - more because if I have to give her a pacifier at 5am I don't want to be searching all over the bed for it... I like to reach my hand in there and know that I'll come out a winner.

i am not 12:16 PM  

Oh and Carrie - did you notice jen's post about the 3 crib sheets? You're on top of things and ahead of the game:) And much smarter than me, I might add - never thought of that.

Jen - pacifiers hitting the floor: This is a huge problem for us... we have bought so many pacifiers in the last 4 1/2 years because if a pacifier is on the floor, it is eaten by the dog (who now has a new name, Woof). Pacifiers are EXPENSIVE when you're buying them all the time. Yes - another good reason to keep the crib bumper - saves money and I'm dutch so we all know how important that is! Good point!

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