It's probably a growth spurt

It’s a growth spurt. She’s teething. She’s just tired. She needs her diaper changed. She needs to poop. She’s hungry. She wants to be held. She’s frustrated because she can’t reach the toy. She wants Mommy. She wants Daddy.

No one tells you how helpless you’ll feel as a parent. Apparently, my daughter can’t actually tell me what she needs. Who knew?! Being pre-verbal makes things more difficult than the baby books would have you believe.

Sometimes my daughter cries. Or screams. Or moans. Or pulls on her ear. Or tries to talk to me. Or she grunts. Or she drools. Or she sticks something in her mouth. She rubs her eyes. She yawns. Sometimes she takes naps. Sometimes those naps are 30 minutes long. Other times those naps are three and a half hours long.

The baby books tell you these are all signs of something, and that different cries mean different things. I think the baby books are lying.

Being a parent is like trying to solve one of those logic puzzles, only with less information:

Clue #1: Eleanor is crying.

Clue #2: There is no Clue #2.

Absent an ability to use logic or rational thought, a problem often compounded by a screaming baby, you give up and start guessing. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you don’t. And what’s frustrating is that even when you do get it right, that doesn’t necessarily mean your baby stops screaming. If she’s tired, and you convince her to take a nap, that doesn’t mean that the nap won’t end, suddenly and without warning, in a new round of screaming 30 minutes later, even though you spent 30 minutes trying to get her to take said nap.

Welcome to parenthood.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in the last seven months is that my daughter is a human, an individual with a separate identity from mine. I know how obvious that sounds, and how stupid I sound for not realizing it more readily, but it’s true.

Chaos reigns with us humans, it seems. Sometimes we’re hungry. Sometimes we aren’t. Some days we sleep well. Some days we don’t. And sometimes we’re grumpy and we can’t explain why. This is true for babies, too, I think.

It’s hard to realize that babies are humans and they experience everything we do (while also cutting teeth -- can you imagine how painful that must be?). But babies can’t tell us about it. So we do the best we can.

I’m not a patient person, and I am particularly impatient when I don’t understand something. I feel like I’m a pretty sharp guy, but I’m constantly stumped by the “signs” my daughter exhibits that supposedly communicate what she needs. That infuriates me. I get so frustrated when I can’t help her, when I can’t “fix” the problem. If only she could tell me what she needs!

Yesterday, Eleanor only took a 35 minute nap in the afternoon. She woke up from that nap at 1:15, and she refused to take another nap until we put her in bed at 6:30. She was miserable, and so was I.

I texted my wife and called my mom, trying to talk through my frustration. I was so upset. I mean, my daughter is screaming and I can’t help her and I’m so tired and all I need is a break from dealing with her. The people who love me listened to my feelings of helplessness, but there was nothing they could do -- my wife was at work and my mom was 70 miles away. They couldn’t meet my needs, even though they love me.

Oh.

They couldn’t solve my problem, any more than I could solve my daughter’s. They could love me. And they could listen and provide encouragement and comfort. But that’s it.

That’s a tough lesson to learn.

Call it evolution or God’s plan, but being helpless is something you have to learn to live with as a parent. Maybe one reason babies take so long to acquire language is so parents can learn this lesson. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to solve your child’s problem, in the moment. But you can love your child, listen and provide encouragement and comfort. In the long run, you hope that your best is enough in most situations.

God grant me the patience to accept my lack of control. And may God grant me the understanding that the love I give my daughter is sometimes the only thing I have to give.