I used to believe that if something was seriously wrong with a baby, the adults caring for her would know.<\/p>\n
At least one of them would notice.<\/p>\n
At least one would say something.<\/p>\n
That was what I believed before the Saturday my sister brought Paige to my house.<\/p>\n
I was wrong.<\/p>\n
And the worst part was that I didn't realize how wrong until I was standing beside a changing table, looking at something nobody had bothered to explain.<\/p>\n
But that came later.<\/p>\n
That morning, I thought I was doing my sister a favor.<\/p>\n
Nothing more.<\/p>\n
Kate was my older sister.<\/p>\n
She and her husband had a six-month-old daughter named Paige.<\/p>\n
I loved that little girl.<\/p>\n
She was still so small that I always paid attention to how I held her.<\/p>\n
I kept one hand beneath her back and made sure her head and neck were supported.<\/p>\n
Those were ordinary things to do with a baby.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to think they would become so important.<\/p>\n
Kate and her husband needed someone to watch Paige while they went shopping.<\/p>\n
I agreed.<\/p>\n
There was no argument about it.<\/p>\n
No reason for one.<\/p>\n
They needed a little time, and I was available.<\/p>\n
I knew babies could be difficult at that age.<\/p>\n
They cried when they were hungry.<\/p>\n
They cried when they were tired.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they cried because their teeth were beginning to come through.<\/p>\n
I understood all that.<\/p>\n
Or I thought I did.<\/p>\n
When Kate arrived that Saturday morning, she looked worn out.<\/p>\n
It was noticeable before she even explained anything.<\/p>\n
Her face had the tired look of someone who had not slept properly.<\/p>\n
She was carrying Paige's diaper bag.<\/p>\n
And she had Paige with her.<\/p>\n
I looked at my sister first.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the baby.<\/p>\n
I remember thinking that Kate probably needed the break more than she wanted to admit.<\/p>\n
That was the explanation I gave myself.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to everything else.<\/p>\n
But at the time, I saw an exhausted mother.<\/p>\n
I didn't see anything that made me question what was happening.<\/p>\n
Kate told me Paige had been having a difficult time with her teeth.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the baby had been restless through much of the night.<\/p>\n
That explained the tiredness.<\/p>\n
It explained why Kate seemed eager to get going.<\/p>\n
And it gave me a reason to expect Paige might be fussy.<\/p>\n
I accepted it immediately.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask for a detailed description of the night.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask how often Paige had woken up.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask whether anything besides teething seemed to be bothering her.<\/p>\n
I thought I understood.<\/p>\n
Six months old.<\/p>\n
Sore gums.<\/p>\n
Very little sleep.<\/p>\n
It sounded ordinary.<\/p>\n
There was nothing about that explanation that struck me as unusual.<\/p>\n
Kate handed me the diaper bag.<\/p>\n
I took it without thinking.<\/p>\n
It was the kind of familiar exchange that happened whenever someone dropped off a baby.<\/p>\n
The bag contained what Paige would need during her visit.<\/p>\n
At least, that was what I assumed.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to treat it as anything more important.<\/p>\n
Kate gave me a small, tired smile.<\/p>\n
I smiled back.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to know Paige would be fine with me.<\/p>\n
And I meant it.<\/p>\n
I was prepared to feed her.<\/p>\n
Change her.<\/p>\n
Hold her.<\/p>\n
Walk around with her if she got restless.<\/p>\n
Whatever she needed.<\/p>\n
I didn't mind.<\/p>\n
I never had.<\/p>\n
Then Kate said something just before she left.<\/p>\n
It was a short remark.<\/p>\n
So ordinary in the moment that I didn't even think to ask what she meant.<\/p>\n
She told me she trusted my judgment if Paige became especially difficult to settle.<\/p>\n
I took that as permission to decide what the baby needed.<\/p>\n
Maybe another bottle.<\/p>\n
Maybe a little more patience.<\/p>\n
Maybe medical advice if the fussiness seemed unusual.<\/p>\n
I didn't hear anything frightening in those words.<\/p>\n
I didn't hear a warning.<\/p>\n
I heard a tired mother telling her sister she trusted her.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
Now, when I think about that morning, I keep returning to that moment.<\/p>\n
Not because I know exactly what Kate was thinking.<\/p>\n
I don't.<\/p>\n
The words themselves didn't tell me.<\/p>\n
But they sounded different once I knew what I eventually found.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had no reason to examine them.<\/p>\n
I was simply glad Kate felt comfortable leaving Paige with me.<\/p>\n
Her husband was there for the shopping trip too.<\/p>\n
They were leaving together.<\/p>\n
I knew that much.<\/p>\n
I also knew I would be responsible for Paige until they returned.<\/p>\n
That was not a responsibility I took lightly.<\/p>\n
A baby that young depended on the person holding her for almost everything.<\/p>\n
Food.<\/p>\n
Comfort.<\/p>\n
A clean diaper.<\/p>\n
A safe place to rest.<\/p>\n
I understood that.<\/p>\n
I believed I could handle an ordinary morning of babysitting.<\/p>\n
And that was still exactly what I thought this would be.<\/p>\n
An ordinary morning.<\/p>\n
Kate and her husband left.<\/p>\n
I was alone with Paige.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate emergency.<\/p>\n
No obvious sign that the next hour would be different from any other time I had watched a baby.<\/p>\n
I had been told she was teething.<\/p>\n
So I was prepared for crying.<\/p>\n
I wasn't prepared for what her crying would sound like.<\/p>\n
That difference matters.<\/p>\n
It matters more than I can explain.<\/p>\n
Because when someone tells you a baby has had a bad night, you start looking for the ordinary reasons she might still be upset.<\/p>\n
You expect discomfort.<\/p>\n
You expect restlessness.<\/p>\n
You expect to spend some time calming her.<\/p>\n
You don't immediately think someone might have hidden an injury beneath her clothes.<\/p>\n
I certainly didn't.<\/p>\n
I trusted the explanation I had been given.<\/p>\n
I trusted it because it came from my sister.<\/p>\n
And because I had never been given any reason that morning to think Paige was hurt.<\/p>\n
Kate hadn't pointed out any injury.<\/p>\n
She hadn't warned me to avoid touching Paige's leg.<\/p>\n
She hadn't explained that one side of the baby's body might be painful.<\/p>\n
She had simply described a difficult night.<\/p>\n
Then she left.<\/p>\n
That was the entire understanding I had when I began looking after my niece.<\/p>\n
I wish I had known more.<\/p>\n
I wish the explanation had been clearer.<\/p>\n
But wishes don't change what I knew then.<\/p>\n
They only make the memory harder to live with afterward.<\/p>\n
For a short time, I continued thinking about ordinary things.<\/p>\n
How to keep Paige comfortable.<\/p>\n
Whether she would take a bottle.<\/p>\n
Whether she might settle once she had some quiet.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to imagine that the diaper bag I had just accepted would soon be beside me in a hospital.<\/p>\n
And I had no reason to believe I would be explaining to a medical professional why there was makeup on my niece's skin.<\/p>\n
Makeup.<\/p>\n
Even now, that word seems wrong beside the name of a six-month-old baby.<\/p>\n
But I didn't know about it yet.<\/p>\n
I only knew Paige had been restless.<\/p>\n
And that my sister trusted me to look after her.<\/p>\n
I was determined to do exactly that.<\/p>\n
For about twenty minutes, I remained inside the explanation Kate had given me.<\/p>\n
Then Paige began making small, unhappy sounds.<\/p>\n
I recognized the beginning of a baby's cry.<\/p>\n
I didn't panic.<\/p>\n
Not then.<\/p>\n
I believed I was dealing with an uncomfortable infant who hadn't slept well.<\/p>\n
I believed the solution would be simple.<\/p>\n
A bottle.<\/p>\n
A little movement.<\/p>\n
Someone holding her close.<\/p>\n
That was the last part of the morning when I could still believe the problem was ordinary.<\/p>\n
Because once Paige started crying, everything I tried seemed to make less sense.<\/p>\n
I didn't know it yet.<\/p>\n
But I was about to discover that I had been looking for the wrong kind of pain.<\/p>\n
I used to believe that if something was seriously wrong with a baby, the adults caring for her would know. At least one of them would notice. At least one … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37705,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37685\/revisions\/37705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}