“Yeah. Not a very high one, just over a hundred. Highest it went was one hundred point two.”
“He’s probably teething then. You have teething rings.” There was a pause before she added, “Right? I’m assuming because he looks about that age.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He jumped up and headed toward the kitchen where he had a couple that had been put in the bag he’d been delivered with. They were in the baby bottle sanitizer that had also been in there. Grabbing one, he rinsed it, holding the phone between his shoulder and ear. “I just give it to him?”
“No, put it in the freezer for a few minutes so it’ll get cold. Then wash your hands and rub his gums with your finger and lulu him.”
“Lulu?”
She was quiet again before responding. “He . . . uh, babies . . . they like soothing luluing. Most do anyway. You rock him and then lulu softly.” She started doing this sort of humming thing, but instead of just humming, she said luuuluuu luuuu luuu luuu, over and over.
Once again, Orlando did as he was told, started rubbing the baby’s gums as he rocked and mimicked Danica’s lulus to the same tune she used. All the while he held the phone between his ear and shoulder. The baby calmed almost immediately, staring at Orlando as he listened to the luluing. “Holy shit,” he whispered between lulus. “It’s working.”
“It is?” She sounded almost as excited as Orlando felt. “Has he been drooling a lot?”
“Yeah, I keep having to change his bib. Sometimes even his little shirt because it soaks through the bib and wets his shirt too.”
“Well, then for sure it’s his teething that has him so cranky. Keep several teething rings in the freezer or even just the refrigerator so you can rotate them. They make over-the-counter ointments you can also rub on his gums, but I’d use those sparingly. It’s better to try and use natural stuff and stay away from the meds whenever possible.”
Orlando continued to lulu softly even as she spoke. He stared down at the baby, who amazingly began to doze off. “He’s falling asleep,” he whispered, feeling completely relieved. “I can’t believe how easy that was.”
“Once you get a better hang of this, you’ll start to narrow down what the issue might be faster. If it’s anything not too serious like this, there’s usually one or two specific things that’ll fix it pretty fast.”
Waiting until the baby had completely knocked out, Orlando continued to lulu softly, appreciating that she stayed on the line until he put him down. Once he was down in his crib, Orlando turned on the baby monitor and camera and tiptoed out the room. “He’s out.” He smiled big but felt drained. “Jesus, where do I sign? We need you in our lives like yesterday.” He heard her laugh softly—nervously—and immediately regretted his choice of words, so he went on speaking quickly. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean for that to sound weird or anything. I just couldn’t get ahold of my mom or anyone that might point me in the right direction. So, you calling when you did was perfect timing. I’d begun to worry we might never hear from you again. I knew he’d been teething, but the fever threw me. I thought maybe he was coming down with something. When I get anxious, my head goes completely somewhere else.”
“No need to apologize. That’s fine. Being a first-time parent can be stressful. But yeah, mild fevers are common when babies are teething. It can even cause diarrhea from the excessive saliva that ends up in their belly and loosens their stool, so don’t be surprised if that happens.”
“Now that you mention it, it’s another reason why I didn’t think his being so cranky had anything to do with his teething. After changing him earlier and his stool was so loose, I was definitely thinking he was coming down with some kind of stomach bug.”
“Nope. Normal.”
She sounded so sure it made him smile. “You’re not even licensed—which apparently doesn’t even matter—and you know all this?”
Again, she laughed, sounding a little nervous. “I do a lot of reading when it comes to all this.”
“Okay, so seriously though, I know you said you already have one job, but any chance you can squeeze us in at least once or twice a week?”
“I can actually.” She sounded a little excited now. “It’s why I’m calling. I just got off the phone with Nine. My daycare thing was mostly an . . . on-call thing. To be honest”—she paused for a moment and he thought he heard her mutter something under her breath but couldn’t make what out it was—“most of my experience is from helping my sister, but she can’t afford to pay me much, and she really doesn’t need me to help her. I just do it for the experience. It’s why I’d been considering finding another job altogether. So, I’m available more than the minimum three days out of the week Nine said he’d need me at the shop. But I told him about you hitting me up to help with the baby, and he said to work it out with you first because, as much as the shop needs the help, he thinks you’ll need me more. He said he’d work me in around your schedule.”
Smiling even bigger, Orlando nodded animatedly as if she could see him. “I am anxious and like I said I do have help with him, between my mom and—” He caught himself because it was only then that he realized he wasn’t sure how to refer to his relationship with Felicia anymore. Technically, he’d never called Felicia his girlfriend, and she’d only called him her boyfriend the one time. They’d since gone back to the way things were before with exception that he’d agreed to have her help with the most precious thing in his life—something he’d never trust with just any of the other women he’d ever dated. But only because she’d insisted she was absolutely willing to help him. If he didn’t need the help so bad, and he wasn’t so hesitant to leave him with strangers, he’d see her less. Yet he’d had no choice but to see her a little more often now than he had after her boyfriend comment. He had even less time for a social life now, so technically, Felicia was the only girl he’d had any time for lately. At this point, he had to admit she was more to him than just one of his go-to girls. But she wasn’t his girlfriend. “My uh . . . friend and I have most of the week covered. But my friend is just doing it temporarily until I find someone else. Right now, she watches him on Fridays. My mom does Monday and Tuesday. Ideally, I’d like to take off Wednesday and Thursday, so I can be at the shop on the weekend when we work on our VIP stuff, but I haven’t really been able to be there on the weekends unless I take Little Man with me.”
“So, you need me on the weekends?”
“Well, not every weekend. I mean I’m sure you have a life. I am part owner, so I can pretty much set my own hours. But Nine’s been running the place pretty much on his own since the baby . . .” He almost said had been in his custody but, again and not sure why, he caught himself. “We can rotate if you need the weekend off, and I can take the weekend off to be with him instead.”
“I’m okay with weekends,” she said eagerly then seemed to catch herself and added something quickly. “I mean, if I ever do need them off, I can let you know ahead of time, and we’ll work something out. But for now, that would be fine. In fact, I think this will work out. I can be at the shop Monday through Friday and watch the baby on the weekends, but if you ever need me to, since Nine said he’d work around you, I could even watch him on Wednesday and/or Thursday and just do my three days at the shop.”