Post 14: Childcare: Part 2

Welcome back bloggers! My baby wasn't too bad: and I found out I had a Normal one. To those who missed Childcare: Part 1, I received an electronic baby on Wednesday for use in an Exploring Early Childhood assignment. I returned it yesterday, and am now writing what happened during the second half of the 22 hours I had the baby for.

The baby had cried 3 times within 11 hours when I wrote Post 13, and this is where the story left off.

I didn't want to sleep, so I decided to play a game called ZunderFury on www.kongregate.com. It's a nice, simple game, but very hard if you decide you want to get all the different feats. The baby cried again: 3 times in 3 hours. Three times in three hours. Unbelievable. It required the key in for 15-20 minutes each time, so it was a tough three hours. At around 1, I decided to go to bed, read, and wait for the baby to cry again.

Once it did, I would stick the key in until it was okay, then go to sleep. However, at about 2, this stopped seeming a good idea, and I went to sleep. I got woken up at 4:30 am, and then had to take care of it again before immediately crashing out again.

I woke up at 7:30, got up at 8, and got ready for school. I grabbed Ariel, wrapped her up in her blanket (which Ms Southwell gives us, in order to further simulate the experience) and took her to school. Two minutes out from the gate, I was thinking 'What are the odds that the baby will cry, right now?'

WAH! WAH! Of course, Murphy's Law. (Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) I rushed it over to Ms Southwell, who took 10 minutes to take the baby due to an important phone call, but then I left it with her. My readout was:

Normal Baby

Cried: 9 times
Head Dropped Back: 6 times (Mostly when it cried, and I was too hurried to get to it to make sure it's head was okay)
Abused: 0
Neglected: 0
Minutes Cried: 4

In total, that's pretty good, Ms Southwell told me.

The worst part about the whole thing wasn't the crying, in the end. Or even the sleep deprivation (I got 5 hours sleep, which was interrupted twice, and thought I did well.)

The worst part was the dread, the fact that this baby was a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode. Just...waiting...to...explode...

A friend of mine, we'll call her Casey, also had the baby on Wednesday, but she turned hers off before midnight. She must have had a pretty tough baby.

I kept that baby close though. Unless it was in the half-hour guaranteed safe zone, I didn't leave it out of my sight, even to pee. When we ate dinner, I put Ariel in her bed (a basket of mine, lined with my clothes and one of my pillows) and took her to the foot of the table.

It's Friday now, and I've almost recovered from my sleep deprivation. I'm also awake enough to realise that these two blog posts are really going to help me in the second part of my assignment, because they provide vital notes and insights. I'll probably just mix and match this stuff into formal writing in the end, and that should do it.

I also handed in a Food Tech assignment today. It was a close run thing, but I managed it. I don't know how well I'll do though.

Well, it looks like that's nearing my 700 words for the day (about twice that of a normal blog post) so I suppose that'll be about it. On to the Dailies!

Daily Quote: 'If you want to test wisdom, offer it to fools and see how they tear it up' -Anonymous

Daily Website: www.blogger.com. It takes a fair bit of work to find good blogs on the site, but try the recommended blogs list on the right-hand side. You can also make a search for certain names or tags. This may not be my best recommendation, but it's at least as good as my blog because it hosts my blog, so it's good enough for me to link.

Until next time, may you take the time to have a good night's sleep (unlike me).

-Callanthae