Back in college I used to nanny and babysit a great deal. Like I said, couldn't get enough of the babies. Late one night, I was babysitting and the little guy started crying. At eight months old, he was expecting to see one of his parents in the middle of the night and wasn't too thrilled to see me. I did my best at consoling. After I went in his room, made sure everything was ok, and rubbed his back for a minute I left his room (with a soft "shhhhhhh, shhhhhhh") hoping he'd self-soothe. (Side note: sleeping is a skill. If you pick your baby up every time they cry, you deprive them of learning the skill to put themselves to sleep. Hold on to that pearl of wisdom. I've done a lot of sleep work with families and it's a tough cycle to break!) Anyway, no such luck that night. After letting him cry it out for a few minutes he grew genuinely distressed and I went back in his room to pick him up and rock him. He began to settle a bit, with his head on my shoulder, but then started coughing. He'd gotten so unsettled that he made himself sick. So "sick" that up came the vomit, and down my back it went. In fact, down my back, into my jeans, and into my underwear. Yes, my friends, I have had a baby throw up in my underwear. And I still love them endlessly.
But, this isn't a post about me. It's about Mr. Seashell. We've talked a lot about starting a family - the details of when and how many kids we'd like (he says 2, I'd like to go for a 3rd if the first two turn out well) - and we share a mutual excitement for that time in our lives. That was more or less where the conversations went.
Then, in January we spent a weekend with one of Mr. Seashell's groomsmen and his wife who'd just had a baby. She was a total cutie pie at 3 months old and we had a great time playing with her. A few months after that, Mr. Seashell went to visit his best man and his wife's baby in Vegas and then it hit: BABY FEVER.
That's right, my fiance developed a full-blown, undeniable case of baby fever. He texted me about how cute this baby was, how he wanted to take him home, and when returned to Chicago he relentlessly asked about how soon we could have kids. He worked babies in to every conversation for the next week. He started counting months to see how soon we could potentially have an actual living, breathing, crying, pooping. baby in our arms. It was one part adorable, and one part freaking me out.
The following weekend we witnessed a toddler have a major meltdown at Einstein's and Mr. Seashell promptly announced that his baby fever was over. It did seem to subside since bagel shop incident, but I'm still sleeping with one eye open and the other hand on my birth control.
Have you ever heard of a man with baby fever?
