Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
But thank God, a few minutes later my brother appeared in the aisle at my side. “Kid’s got some set of lungs.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He was fine until we took off. I tried to give him the bottle, but he sucked once and then let the formula dribble out of the side of his mouth.”
“Hand him over. Let me give it a try.”
I shook my head vigorously. “No way. It’s not safe. What if we hit turbulence?”
Elvin looked amused, but I definitely wasn’t. He leaned toward the woman sitting next to me. “Excuse me. Would you mind changing seats with me? I’m just two rows back in a window seat, same as you.”
The woman couldn’t unbuckle fast enough. She grabbed her bag from under the seat and practically ran to row fourteen. Elvin parked himself next to me and put his hands out for the baby.
“Buckle first,” I snapped.
My brother reached for the seatbelt, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ. You’re not going to wrap the kid in foam padding, are you?”
After a click, he held his hands out again. “Come visit Uncle E, buddy.”
I passed Patrick to him, and Elvin rocked back and forth a few times. To my utter amazement, the baby stopped crying. “Seriously? What was I doing wrong?”
He laughed. “Maybe he felt the stress radiating from you. Babies tend to be sensitive to the emotional cues of their parents. They pick up on anxiety from movements and body language.”
“Then I’m screwed because I can’t imagine not being stressed the first—I don’t know—eighteen years of his life?”
“He probably started crying because he felt the pressure in his ears from takeoff. Do you have a pacifier?”
“I do. But I tried the bottle and he didn’t want it.”
“Sometimes they want to suck but not drink. Give it to me.”
I handed over the rubber pacifier I’d wrapped in a paper towel and within a minute, Patrick had nodded off to sleep.
“He’s also warm,” my brother noted. “It’s hot in here, and I can still feel your body heat on him through his blanket. I’m going to unwrap him and let him breathe for a minute while he sleeps.”
“Uh…maybe you shouldn’t—”
Though it was too late. Elvin peeled back the first layer of my “swaddle” and his eyebrows jumped. “Are you shitting me, bro? Duct tape?”
I hadn’t been able to get the stupid swaddle to stay closed the way the nurses had, so Patrick and I took a walk to the hardware store down the block, and I duct taped the layers of swaddle together to keep it closed. “That was the best I could do. And don’t curse around my kid.”
“I’ll show you how to swaddle once we land.”
I let out a heavy breath. “Can you show me how to be a father? Because I have no damn clue.”
Elvin smiled. “You’re going to be great. You might not know everything, but you found a way to get the job done, didn’t you?”
“I’m terrified I’m going to screw up.”
“So you’ve said. And I’ve told you that’s a given. But you’ll both survive it. I screwed up plenty with my kids. When Ethan was two weeks old, he woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I decided to be a hero and get up for a change, but it takes me a while to really wake up. Ethan drank powdered formula, so I went into the kitchen and mixed him a bottle. But he wouldn’t stop fussing while I fed it to him. Turned out, I’d mixed my protein powder, so he was drinking Muscle Milk. Another time, we got this fancy new jogging stroller. The thing had everything—cup holder, shock absorbers, place to clip your phone. Anyway, I decided to be the ultimate adventurer and take the baby to the nature trail around Sizemore Lake. As I was walking, a squirrel ran across the path in front of me, and I thought I’d snap a picture with Ethan and the furry guy in the frame together. So I started running after the squirrel, into the wooded area. It was a jogging stroller with beefy tires and shocks, so I figured it was meant for off-roading. But a hundred feet in, I hit a rock and the stroller lurched forward. Ethan, who was strapped into the damn thing, somehow flew out like he was launched from a cannon with no helmet. Luckily, he landed in a bush, and didn’t bash his head on a rock, but he still got a couple of good scrapes and was bleeding.” Elvin pointed at me. “And if you ever tell Linda that story, I’ll put itching powder in all your boxers like we did to Axe for his sixteenth birthday. Linda thinks I was carrying him and some asshole cyclist whizzed by and knocked us over.”