The first thing I tried was feeding her.<\/p>\n
It seemed obvious.<\/p>\n
Paige had started whimpering not long after Kate and her husband left.<\/p>\n
I knew she hadn't slept well.<\/p>\n
I also knew that babies sometimes became upset simply because they were hungry.<\/p>\n
So I warmed a bottle.<\/p>\n
Nothing about that decision felt unusual.<\/p>\n
I expected her to accept it.<\/p>\n
Maybe she would drink enough to relax.<\/p>\n
Maybe afterward she would fall asleep.<\/p>\n
That would have been a perfectly ordinary morning.<\/p>\n
But Paige didn't want the bottle.<\/p>\n
She refused it.<\/p>\n
I tried to understand why.<\/p>\n
Perhaps her gums were hurting.<\/p>\n
That was still the explanation I had been given.<\/p>\n
A baby with sore gums might not want to feed.<\/p>\n
I reminded myself of that.<\/p>\n
And I tried not to let her crying make me anxious.<\/p>\n
I had looked after babies before.<\/p>\n
I knew the person holding them sometimes needed to stay calm even when they couldn't.<\/p>\n
So I picked Paige up.<\/p>\n
I made sure she was supported.<\/p>\n
Then I held her against my shoulder.<\/p>\n
I began walking slowly around the living room.<\/p>\n
Back and forth.<\/p>\n
Small, careful circles.<\/p>\n
I wanted the movement to soothe her.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to feel secure.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to believe that if I stayed patient, she would settle.<\/p>\n
At first, she was making those soft, unhappy sounds babies make when something is bothering them.<\/p>\n
They were uncomfortable to hear.<\/p>\n
But not yet frightening.<\/p>\n
I kept walking.<\/p>\n
I adjusted how I held her.<\/p>\n
I tried to find a position that seemed easier for her.<\/p>\n
Nothing helped.<\/p>\n
Her crying became sharper.<\/p>\n
Not all at once.<\/p>\n
It seemed to build.<\/p>\n
A little louder.<\/p>\n
A little more strained.<\/p>\n
A little harder to understand.<\/p>\n
I remember paying closer attention to the sound.<\/p>\n
The more I listened, the less it resembled the ordinary fussiness I had expected.<\/p>\n
There was something about the way it kept increasing.<\/p>\n
As though she was trying to tell me something and had no other way to do it.<\/p>\n
Of course, that is what crying is for a baby.<\/p>\n
I knew that.<\/p>\n
But there are different kinds of crying.<\/p>\n
There is a tired cry.<\/p>\n
There is a hungry cry.<\/p>\n
And then there is the sound a baby makes when something genuinely hurts.<\/p>\n
I didn't recognize that last sound immediately.<\/p>\n
That is difficult for me to admit.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about teething.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about the bottle she had refused.<\/p>\n
I kept believing that I simply hadn't found the right way to comfort her.<\/p>\n
So I continued holding her.<\/p>\n
I continued walking.<\/p>\n
I tried to be gentle.<\/p>\n
That part matters.<\/p>\n
I was not bouncing her around or moving her roughly.<\/p>\n
I knew she was small.<\/p>\n
I knew she was already upset.<\/p>\n
I was trying to make things better, not worse.<\/p>\n
Then I shifted the hand supporting her lower back.<\/p>\n
It was an ordinary adjustment.<\/p>\n
The sort of movement a person makes without thinking when carrying a baby.<\/p>\n
My hand had been supporting her.<\/p>\n
I moved it slightly.<\/p>\n
And Paige screamed.<\/p>\n
I mean she really screamed.<\/p>\n
The sound was so sudden that I stopped walking immediately.<\/p>\n
Her body became stiff against me.<\/p>\n
Her little hands closed tightly.<\/p>\n
I could feel how tense she was.<\/p>\n
For a second, I didn't understand what had happened.<\/p>\n
I had not dropped her.<\/p>\n
I had not made any sudden movement.<\/p>\n
I had only changed the position of my hand.<\/p>\n
Yet her reaction was immediate.<\/p>\n
And it was severe.<\/p>\n
I remember looking down at her.<\/p>\n
Her dark hair was damp against her forehead.<\/p>\n
She was sweating.<\/p>\n
Her small fists were clenched.<\/p>\n
There was nothing relaxed about her.<\/p>\n
Nothing that suggested she was merely being restless.<\/p>\n
Something was hurting her.<\/p>\n
That was the first clear thought I had.<\/p>\n
Not that she was difficult.<\/p>\n
Not that she was overtired.<\/p>\n
That she was in pain.<\/p>\n
Once I understood that, I stopped trying to settle her by walking.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to keep moving her without knowing what was wrong.<\/p>\n
I held her as steadily as I could.<\/p>\n
I remember how carefully I began thinking about every movement.<\/p>\n
Where my hands were.<\/p>\n
How her body rested against me.<\/p>\n
Whether changing her position might hurt her again.<\/p>\n
It felt strange to be so frightened of making a simple adjustment while holding my own niece.<\/p>\n
But I had heard that scream.<\/p>\n
And I knew I didn't want to hear it again.<\/p>\n
I couldn't ignore it.<\/p>\n
I needed to look at her properly.<\/p>\n
Maybe something was wrong with her diaper.<\/p>\n
Maybe her clothes were too tight.<\/p>\n
Maybe there was some source of discomfort I hadn't noticed.<\/p>\n
I didn't know.<\/p>\n
I only knew I needed to check.<\/p>\n
So I carried her to the changing table.<\/p>\n
I moved slowly.<\/p>\n
I tried to keep her body steady.<\/p>\n
The trip from the living room to the changing table was not important in itself.<\/p>\n
What mattered was how differently I held her.<\/p>\n
A few minutes earlier, I had been walking around to comfort a fussy baby.<\/p>\n
Now I was afraid that touching the wrong place might cause another scream.<\/p>\n
I laid her down carefully.<\/p>\n
I was still thinking about ordinary possibilities.<\/p>\n
A diaper problem.<\/p>\n
A clothing problem.<\/p>\n
Something irritating her skin.<\/p>\n
I had not yet imagined what I would find.<\/p>\n
That is another thing I remember clearly.<\/p>\n
My mind was still reaching for the simplest explanation.<\/p>\n
Even after that scream.<\/p>\n
Even after the stiffness in her body.<\/p>\n
I wanted an answer that would make everything normal again.<\/p>\n
I wanted to find something I could fix.<\/p>\n
I looked at her green sleeper.<\/p>\n
I began opening it.<\/p>\n
I was careful because she had already reacted so badly to being moved.<\/p>\n
I didn't want the fabric pulling against anything painful.<\/p>\n
As I loosened the clothing, I watched her legs.<\/p>\n
And then I noticed something that made me stop.<\/p>\n
Her right leg was moving.<\/p>\n
Not comfortably.<\/p>\n
She was still upset.<\/p>\n
But it was moving.<\/p>\n
Her left leg was different.<\/p>\n
There was very little movement on that side.<\/p>\n
I watched again.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be certain.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to frighten myself over something I had misunderstood.<\/p>\n
But the difference remained.<\/p>\n
One leg moved when she cried.<\/p>\n
The other barely did.<\/p>\n
I felt the first real surge of fear.<\/p>\n
Until then, I had known she was hurting.<\/p>\n
Now I was beginning to understand that the pain might be connected to a specific part of her body.<\/p>\n
Her left leg.<\/p>\n
I stared at it.<\/p>\n
I didn't touch it to test anything.<\/p>\n
I didn't try to bend it.<\/p>\n
I knew that would be wrong when she was already in so much pain.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't stop looking at the difference.<\/p>\n
A six-month-old baby doesn't decide to protect a leg the way an older child might.<\/p>\n
She cannot explain where the pain is coming from.<\/p>\n
She simply reacts.<\/p>\n
And Paige's reaction was telling me something important.<\/p>\n
I remembered the hand beneath her lower back.<\/p>\n
I remembered how she had screamed when I changed my hold.<\/p>\n
I thought about how her leg might have moved against me.<\/p>\n
I couldn't say exactly what had caused that particular burst of pain.<\/p>\n
But I knew I shouldn't dismiss it.<\/p>\n
I leaned closer.<\/p>\n
I wanted to inspect the area without making her more uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I had still not seen the injury.<\/p>\n
Her clothes and diaper were in the way.<\/p>\n
So I continued carefully.<\/p>\n
There was a part of me that wanted to stop and call Kate immediately.<\/p>\n
But what would I have said?<\/p>\n
That Paige was crying?<\/p>\n
Kate had already warned me she might be fussy.<\/p>\n
That she was moving one leg less than the other?<\/p>\n
That was important, but I still didn't know what was happening.<\/p>\n
I needed to see whether there was something obvious.<\/p>\n
I needed to understand enough to help her.<\/p>\n
So I stayed at the changing table.<\/p>\n
My hands were more cautious now.<\/p>\n
Paige was still crying.<\/p>\n
I was watching her face and her legs at the same time.<\/p>\n
I kept reminding myself not to rush.<\/p>\n
There was no reason to make her suffer more because I was frightened.<\/p>\n
But my thoughts were becoming harder to organize.<\/p>\n
The bottle hadn't helped.<\/p>\n
Holding her hadn't helped.<\/p>\n
Walking hadn't helped.<\/p>\n
And the movement that should have been harmless had caused a terrible scream.<\/p>\n
I couldn't keep calling that teething.<\/p>\n
I simply couldn't.<\/p>\n
I began loosening her diaper.<\/p>\n
Very gently.<\/p>\n
I was expecting to look for some ordinary irritation.<\/p>\n
That was the last ordinary explanation I tried to give myself.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed a smell that didn't belong there.<\/p>\n
Soft.<\/p>\n
Floral.<\/p>\n
Powdery.<\/p>\n
It was faint, but unmistakably different from what I expected.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
I knew that scent.<\/p>\n
Not because it belonged to anything in a baby's diaper.<\/p>\n
Because it reminded me of cosmetics.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I didn't understand why I would be smelling makeup while changing Paige.<\/p>\n
Then I looked more closely at her thigh.<\/p>\n
And I saw a strange beige coating on her skin.<\/p>\n
It was thick enough to notice.<\/p>\n
The color did not look natural.<\/p>\n
I stared.<\/p>\n
I had gone to the changing table looking for the cause of a baby's crying.<\/p>\n
Instead, I was looking at something that appeared to have been deliberately applied to her leg.<\/p>\n
Something that did not belong there.<\/p>\n
That was when I stopped thinking like a babysitter trying to settle a child.<\/p>\n
I started thinking about what someone might have been trying to cover.<\/p>\n
The first thing I tried was feeding her. It seemed obvious. Paige had started whimpering not long after Kate and her husband left. I knew she hadn't slept well. I … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37727","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\/37727","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=37727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37747,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37727\/revisions\/37747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}