FIFTEEN
Three fucking days of maybe four hours of sleep total, plus the game against Denver Tech, and I was starting to lose my mind.
My daughter—Christ, I still couldn’t believe I was thinking those words—had apparently decided that nighttime was for screaming and daytime was for brief, merciful naps that lasted just long enough for me to think I might actually survive this before she woke up wailing again.
It was 2:17 a.m. according to my phone, and I was pacing the living room with her pressed against my shoulder, bouncing slightly and making those shushing sounds that seemed to work for exactly thirty seconds before she decided I was doing it all wrong.
“Come on, baby girl,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from exhaustion. “Please. Just sleep for like two hours. That’s all I’m asking.”
She responded by letting out an ear-piercing shriek that made me wince.
“Dude, what the hell?” Liam appeared in the doorway, looking like he’d been dragged through hell backward. Hishair was sticking up at impossible angles, and there were pillow marks on his face. “It’s been three hours.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped, immediately feeling bad. None of this was his fault. “Sorry, man. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Gordy emerged from his room a moment later, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Maybe she’s hungry?”
“I fed her an hour ago,” I said, still bouncing. “And changed her. And checked her temperature. And tried that thing Sam showed me with the swaddle blanket.”
The baby’s cries intensified, and I felt that familiar surge of panic that had been my constant companion for the past few days. What if something was actually wrong with her? What if I was failing as a father before I’d even figured out how to be one?
“Okay, new approach,” Liam said, moving closer. He was shirtless and wearing pajama pants with little tacos on them. “What do we know about babies?”
“Absolutely nothing if her nonstop crying is anything to go by,” I said flatly.
“Wrong,” Liam said with the kind of confidence that only came from being slightly delirious with exhaustion. “We know about girls. And this is technically a girl.”
“She’s not a girl; she’s a baby,” Gordy said from where he was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“But she’s a female baby,” Liam continued, clearly on some kind of logic train that made sense only to him. “So maybe we should treat her like we would any other female we’re trying to calm down.”
I stared at him. “You want us to buy her dinner and tell her she’s pretty?”
“No, you idiot. But think about it—what calms girls down? Music.”
I paused my bouncing. “Music?”
“Yeah, man. Singing. Lullabies. That’s, like, basic parenting stuff, right?”
Gordy pushed off from the doorframe. “Actually, some of the YouTube videos I watched said music therapy is proven to reduce stress and promote relaxation in infants. Their auditory development makes them particularly responsive to rhythmic patterns and melodic phrases.”
Liam blinked at him. “I was going to say chicks dig musicians, but sure, let’s go with the science thing.”
The idea was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. Then again, I’d been running on fumes and panic for three days straight. Higher brain function wasn’t exactly my strong suit right now.
“I don’t know any lullabies,” I admitted.
“So we make it up, or we can sing her a pop song or something,” Liam said. “How hard can it be?”
Famous last words.
What followed was probably the most ridiculous twenty minutes of my life. Liam started us off with what I can only describe as a folk-rap version of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” that somehow incorporated references to hockey and beer. Gordy followed with an attempt at “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” that devolved into him just repeating “twinkle” over and over in different octaves like some kind of demented wind chime.
And me? I ended up singing a slowed-down, acoustic version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” because it was literally the only song I could remember all the words to thanks to Ava’s love of 80s music and the fact she used to blare the song nonstop when we were growing up.
The crazy thing was it worked. Not immediately—my daughter clearly had standards that we weren’t even close toliving up to—but gradually, her cries softened to whimpers, then to occasional hiccups, and finally to the kind of deep, even breathing that meant she was finally, blissfully asleep.
We stood there in the living room, three college hockey players swaying slightly and humming Journey under our breath, afraid to move and break whatever spell we’d managed to cast.
