The Apocalypse of Uncooperativeness

Please, please, please don’t get me wrong. I love being a stay at home Dad and spending lots of time with H. However, there can occasionally be moments when frustration gets the better of me and I come close to losing my cool.

This happened on Tuesday when I nearly lost it with my son. He’s been sick for a few days with a cough and I’d taken him to the doctor the day before. They couldn’t really do much for his cough but they did find he had an ear infection. You can understand then that he’d had a few off days with temperatures, hadn’t been eating and also a couple of disturbed nights.

It was just after 4pm and he needed to have his nappy changed. I hadn’t counted but there had been a few multiples of two in his nappy already during the day. He was sick of having his bottom wiped and I was getting a little sick of doing it too.

It was here that the apocalypse of uncooperativeness began.

Firstly to even try and get his pants off he wouldn’t lie still and kept flipping over onto his hands and knees and then trying to stand up. When this happens I put on some music from a wind up music box and this usually soothes H. Today though – no deal.

Finally the pants were off and we were trying for the nappy. Again though the flipping onto all fours and trying to stand up occurred. The standing up part is ok when you’re trying to get pants off. However, when there is a nappy half off with toxic substances beginning to ooze from the side we have a problem.

If music hasn’t soothed him he quite likes having something in his hands to play with. He likes his nail clippers to play with – but they’d gone over the side of the changes table and bounced under the cot. Likewise his thermometer, gone over the side. His nappy cream, his nappies, soon joined these along with the baby wipes. All that was left was the hand sanitizer cowering in the far corner and a squirming, half-nappied baby trying his best to reach it. 

Finally the nappy was off and his bottom wiped just as the music box stopped and silence prevailed. It wasn’t as if he was being a screaming, crying mess throughout this event. H was giving dad the silent squirms.

I looked at H and said to him, “You’ve unleashed the apocalypse of uncooperativeness here today haven’t you!” Although it probably didn’t come out very clearly because you try saying, “Apocalypse of uncooperativeness,” when you’re trying to pin a squirming bundle of baby down.

Somehow, eventually, how I’m not sure I managed to get the nappy back on H. I do know that the last bit of velcro was attached as he attempted to catapult himself out of my arms. I wasn’t even going to worry about the shorts for a minute and I placed him on the floor. I didn’t want to deal with him for a moment because I was getting very close to losing my cool here.

Let the apocalypse continue though thought H because he picked his shorts up, held them up high and demanded they be put on. “Nooooooooooooo!” I screamed in silent despair. I knelt down to the floor and helped him into one leg of his shorts – thank goodness he was now being cooperative!

That was his point of needing to run again and off he shot around behind me, one leg in his shorts that were now trailing carelessly behind him. That was my point of really getting one step closer to the edge of losing my cool.

“Leave it,” I said to myself. “He’s safe and ok.”

I was close to the floor so I lay down and began to retrieve items that had bounced under his cot and change table. As I stretched as far as I could underneath I realised I had made a critical error of judgment.  Never, ever, ever put yourself in a prone position on your stomach when the apocalypse of uncooperativeness is being unleashed.

Two small hands found their way into the middle of my shoulder blades and in the next moment one leg swung over my body. I had now being unceremoniously mounted like a horse. Of course to make sure a horse is under full control a rider needs a bridle and it was here that the shorts came off the leg and over my head. It was also where the silent squirms ended and a peel of laughter erupted from H.

It was here that I finally lost it. No it was not the cool that I had been so close to losing only moments before.  I lost it in laughter with my son as we both realised his moment of triumph had come over his Dad.

I also grasped that the child who was doing this was not the little boy who a couple of days before had been clingy and miserable. It was a little boy who was starting to feel healthy again and wanting to play, his apocalypse of uncooperativeness was him showing me this in the only way he knew how.  

Let’s just say I was glad I only lost it in laughter because the next hour until dinner was high octane playing before some great eating and heading off to a full night’s sleep.