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I'm not the designated putter-to-bedder.

I am the waker-upper, the bottle-getter, the morning diaper-changer, and the taker-to-daycare. At night, I hide out in the bedroom until Matt has gotten Adam to sleep. Some nights I hide for a very long time; sleeping has never been Adam's forte.

Last night, though, Matt went out. We've all been going stir-crazy from being snowed in, and I didn't begrudge him the time away, but it meant I had to do the bedtime routine, which I haven't done for at least a month. Add to that the fact that what little routine we had has been all screwed up since our trip to Portland, and I was definitely not looking forward to it.

The last time Matt was away for a few days, I'd gotten Adam into the habit of going into his crib tired, but not quite asleep, just like the various experts say you should. It turns out Matt and I didn't talk that one over very well, because Adam is definitely out of the habit now. Every time I got up from the sofa to carry him in to his bedroom, he woke right up and screamed.

Finally, I tried putting him in the crib anyway, since sometimes I can get him back to sleep with a backrub once he's in there. Nothing doing - he was moving into full fuss mode. I ducked out for a moment, figuring it was my only chance to use the bathroom, and pretending that the "he'll settle down once you're out of sight" thing has ever worked for us.

When I came back (mere moments later), he was standing up in the corner of his crib, letting out unearthly shrieks. I gave in. I picked him up. Something went thump.

This was my first actual mistake of the evening: I ignored it. Nothing seemed to have fallen, Adam was pissed off as all hell, but I didn't see any new reason for it, so I picked him up and carried him out to the sofa. I forgot about the thump.

It took quite a while to calm him down. I gave him a bottle of water, let him drool all over my shirt, and waited while he squirmed into the appropriate baby yoga pose next to me. The cries turned into whimpers (punctuated by gulping), and eventually his eyelids drooped again. At some point in there we both drifted off, but I woke up about twenty minutes later and succeeded, this time, in carrying him into his bedroom. I deposited him in his crib, where he lay very peacefully, snoring away on his downward slope.

Eh?

A moment of closer inspection led to hurriedly snatching him back up again when I realized that the thump had been the mattress portion of the crib completely dislodging from the cage part - one corner was now resting on the floor. The kid who had been trying to climb out of his crib only yesterday could now easily have slithered right under the walls. Who cares about nasty, exposed hardware? He's up-to-date on his DTaP. Thank G-d for friction, or I might have been dislodging his head from the gigantic fucking hole that showed up.

I made a nest out of blankets and settled him in the middle of the floor. Then I got into bed and shook for quite a while.

A few words on the death trap crib. Its origins are lost in the mists of time, but it has held at least three previous generations of Matt's family. This, apparently, makes it an heirloom of great emotional significance, rather than a rickety pile of sticks with sharp, poky metal bits, as I first assumed. It completely fails to meet all modern safety standards. Raising or lowering the side produces a screechy wail any banshee would be proud of, which means the side always stays up. Reaching over the side to deposit a sleeping child is almost, but not quite, impossible for me, and causes alarming creaking and swaying, in any case. The mattress itself cannot be raised or lowered, because after the umpteenth time that particular bit of hardware broke, it was apparently welded in place, but only on one side.

When I raised these concerns, I was met with a charming repetition of the family witticism, "they aren't making babies' heads any smaller," along with the logically idiotic "we used it for Matt, and he's just fine!" Pray tell me, at what point do the kids who didn't turn out just fine stand up and be counted?*

I gave in. Clearly, I ought to have fought harder. I didn't actually want any of my worries to be proven right.

Moral of the story: Adam is fine. Adam was lucky. Antiques belong in museums, and if there had been an axe handy at that particular moment, that thing would be in even more pieces than it currently is.

*Matt comes off badly in this telling. That's because I'm angry, and scared, and it's my blog. In the interest of fairnass, I should note that he is not actually careless with Adam, nor is he generally an asshole.