For example, underfeeding, one of the lines said: “You don’t need to warm up his formula. This is an old wives tale. Plenty of babies prefer their formula to be room-temperature or chilled. Whatever the baby prefers is best.”
At the end of the note was a link to a YouTube video with a maternity expert explaining the point.
“I’ve written college papers that were less thorough than this,” I muttered while reading it.
Having something,anything,to reference made taking care of Baby Anthony exponentially easier. It was like I had a cheat-sheet to motherhood.
We got into a routine over the next few days. Baby Anthony preferred his formula to be room-temperature, and he guzzled it down more eagerly than when it was warm.
Regarding diaper changes, there was one piece of advice that became a game-changer: “Always keep the baby distracted.” Now when I changed Baby Anthony, I recruited one of the guys to help me distract him with a toy. Taylor made silly noises and waved Anthony’s noisy rattle back and forth, transfixing the child while I cleaned him up and put on a fresh diaper.
I was clueless about the basics when I first arrived, but within two days I felt like an expert. My confidence seemed to transfer into the three firemen, who began to relax and trust that I had things under control.
The one problem was that Baby Anthony was still struggling at night. Even with the spreadsheet tip recommending that I over-feed Anthony a little bit before bedtime, Anthony was waking up almost every hour.
Unfortunately, there was one tip undersleepingthat was bolded and highlighted in yellow: “If baby is restless, there’s nothing you can do. Just keep comforting him when he wakes and he will eventually grow out of it.”
So I suffered his moods at night and tried to sleep whenever I could. Soon I was an expert at falling asleep practically the moment my head hit the pillow, although that had more to do with my severe exhaustion rather than any particular skill.
“I think he’s nocturnal,” I said one morning while bouncing the baby in my arms around the kitchen. “He sleeps more during the day than he does at night.”
“He’s a baby,” Jordan said while pouring me a mug of coffee. “He’s still figuring it out.”
It was weird being around Jordan while also taking care of a baby. It was kind of like the two of us were playing house. Except that we were in a fire station. And two other guys were around all the time. And the baby wasn’t ours.
Okay, maybe it was nothing like playing house. But it was weird all the same. We had been on one date, and had slept together once, and suddenly we werelivingtogether. It felt like we had skipped a whole bunch of steps in the process.
Kissing him was kind of awkward around his two firemen teammates, too. Jordan was more comfortable with it than I was, but slowly I started getting used to it. Neither Derek nor Taylor seemed to mind, and tried to give us some space whenever Jordan was affectionate with a warm hug or a peck on the cheek.
Even though I was the one taking care of the baby, the guys had weird sleep schedules. Occasionally getting an emergency call in the middle of the night would do that, I supposed. Derek seemed to fight through his sleepiness with extra coffee, while Jordan and Taylor grabbed cat naps whenever they could. It wasn’t unusual to walk into the living room and find one of them asleep in the recliner and another stretched out on the sofa, no matter what time of day it was.
I started learning their routines and getting a deeper appreciation for what it took to be a firefighter. The guys went out on Tuesday to get groceries, taking the fire engine and their gear in case they got a call while they were out. They returned with more baby supplies, too: diapers, wipes, formula, and even a baby monitor. I really appreciated the latter, because it meant I could let Baby Anthony sleep in the soundproof bedroom while I hung out in the kitchen or living area.
Breakfast was the biggest meal of the day, I learned. Taylor went all out: every day was some combination of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, English muffins, French toast, waffles, pancakes, and fruit. They had sandwiches for lunch—Derek and Jordan preferred sliced turkey, while Taylor made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day.
Dinner was almost always some sort of casserole meal. The firehouse kitchen had six different casserole dishes, and Taylor put them to use.
“Not that I mind,” I said on Wednesday evening while watching Taylor make dinner. Jordan was napping, and Derek was watching Baby Anthony in the other room. “I’ve loved everything you’ve made so far. But do you ever have anythingotherthan casseroles?”
Taylor’s back was to me while he mixed the ingredients together in a bowl. The motion made his butt—a butt that wasverycute—jiggle back and forth. I found myself not-so-subtly admiring his body while he cooked. I was too exhausted to pretend not to.
“It’s a strategic food,” Taylor said over his shoulder.
“Strategic? How can a food bestrategic?”
“The busy time of night is between six and nine,” he explained. “It’s when we’re most likely to get a call and have to leave suddenly. If I’m grilling a fancy meal—let’s say steak, and a bunch of sides. What happens if I’m halfway done cooking the steaks when we get a call? I have to turn off all the pans, and the food gets ruined. Steak isn’t very tasty when it’s half-cooked, sits out for an hour, and then is re-cooked. Trust me—I’ve had to do that before.”
He turned and poured the bowl mixture into a glass dish. There was chicken, gravy, and a bunch of vegetables mixed in. “But casseroles? It’s much easier to fix. If it’s in the oven when we get a call, all we have to do is turn the oven off and remove the dish. It doesn’t matter if it sits out for a while—when we get back, we just throw it back in the oven and cook it. Generally speaking, of course.”
“That makes sense,” I admitted. “Especially the oven part. I know how important it is not to leave that on while you’re gone, even on the lowest setting.”
Taylor gave me a rueful look and lowered his voice. “Don’t take it personally. Chief is real particular about that.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered.
Taylor covered the dish with a healthy sprinkling of shredded cheese and popped it in the oven. He then ran his hand through his silky blond hair and sighed. “Chief likes you. He just has a weird way of showing it sometimes.”
“That’s what Jordan told me,” I said glancing into the other room. I didn’t think he could hear me, but I still kept my voice low. “That Derek has a crush on me. It just doesn’t really feel like it after getting chewed out by him.”