Recently, my husband and I became parents, and honestly? IT’S BEEN A NIGHTMARE! Every time I lay our baby in his crib, he starts screaming nonstop, day and night. Not a whimper, not a fuss, but an ear-splitting, blood-curdling shriek that rips through my soul. Two months. Two months of this. I’m a ghost of myself, running on fumes and the bitter taste of utter failure. We tried everything. Doctors, pediatricians, specialists. Countless formula changes, reflux meds, colic drops, weighted swaddles, white noise machines. We even hired a sleep consultant who just stared at us, bewildered, as our baby turned beet red, pushing himself against the bars, screaming until he choked. They all said he was healthy. They all said it was normal. But this wasn’t normal. This was torture. Our perfect little nursery, painted with so much love, became a chamber of dread. My husband was… supportive. He’d hold me as I cried, assure me I wasn’t a bad mother, tell me we’d get through this. But then, after I’d collapsed in exhaustion, unable to stand the sound another second, he’d always be the one to finally get the baby to calm down. He’d walk out of the nursery an hour later, looking tired but victorious. “He’s finally asleep,” he’d whisper, and I’d fall into a shallow, guilt-ridden slumber, only for the screaming to start again a few hours later, always from the crib. It was always the crib.
The constant noise, the sleep deprivation, it warped my mind. I started seeing things, hearing things that weren’t there. I felt like I was losing my grip. Was I going insane? Was I imagining how truly awful it was? I caught myself watching him, my husband, sometimes. A flicker in his eyes when the baby started up again. A strange tension in his jaw. Little things I dismissed as my own paranoia. But the gut feeling, a cold knot in my stomach, wouldn’t go away.
One afternoon, I’d just laid the baby down for what I knew would be another short, agonizing nap. The screams started immediately, as always. My head pounded. I grabbed my phone, desperate to record it, to show someone, anyone, that this wasn’t normal, that I wasn’t just being dramatic. As I fumbled, the baby thrashed, and a small, almost imperceptible piece of paper fluttered out from under his mattress. It was caught on the edge, hidden by the sheet. My husband usually changed the sheets. I never did.
My hands shook as I picked it up. It was a folded medical report. Not for the baby. For my husband. Dated weeks before our wedding. I unfolded it slowly, every word a punch to the gut. “Genetic Carrier Status: XXX Syndrome. High probability of transmission to offspring.” My blood ran cold. He had known. He knew all along. This wasn’t just colic, this wasn’t just “a fussy baby.” This was a real, debilitating condition that our child was suffering from, a condition that explained the incessant pain, the screaming, the thrashing. And then I saw it, scrawled in the margins in his own handwriting: “Symptoms managed with daily sedative. Start 2 weeks postpartum. Dosage instructions: 1/4 dose twice daily.” My baby wasn’t just screaming. HE WAS IN WITHDRAWAL! My husband wasn’t comforting him. He was dosing him. He was poisoning him, then letting him suffer, letting me suffer, because of his own monstrous secret. My world didn’t just shatter. It evaporated. EVERYTHING WAS A LIE.
