Silencing my child

To whomever:

I want to thank you. We had no idea how ungodly it is to be woken up in the middle of the night by a child until you slipped your note under our door after breakfast, presumably right before you checked out to escape the mentally damaging experience our completely ungodly, total wreck of a child put you through. I am, however, relieved you were not so distraught as to forget to add a smiley face at the end of your note.

We are so sorry that we did not inquire if other people were staying at the hotel before we booked online. Our mistake. I’m sure if we really tried we could have found a hotel where absolutely no one else was staying, especially in the middle of downtown Portland, Maine. Perhaps we could have stayed in a cabin in the woods, but we came to this particular area because we wanted to explore the coast of Maine, taking a few stroller friendly hikes and seeing a few lighthouses set precariously atop an imposing rocky shore eternally fending off blows from the definitely godless sea, while also enjoying Portland’s reputable food scene at one of the many restaurants a mere five minute walk from our hotel.

Why did you come here? It seems like you came for quietude, though I did not see any monasteries or silent yoga retreats in downtown Portland.

But back to the aforementioned child. We do have one. He is five. He slept through the whole night. We had to wake him up at eight thirty in the morning, actually quite a godly hour for a small child to wake up, so we can only assume the child you speak of is in fact our baby, who is one.

You’re not obligated to like babies or know anything about them and there’s an open debate about how many babies are too many for the world to handle, but this baby will eventually be obligated to pay into your social security and who knows, maybe even be your anesthesiologist should you need a triple heart bypass, so he does deserve at least some of your patience.

Like most parents we try our best to make sure our baby doesn’t cause a ruckus, but clearly our best is not good enough. I know he woke up at 11:45 pm, right as I was about to go down for the night. I know this specific time because I had been reading about Portland’s International Museum of Cryptozoology on my phone. Also, most parents are acutely aware of what time they go to bed because we are in a constant battle of trying to get to bed at a decent time. Most of us are losing the battle of trying to get to bad at a decent time and it’s usually not because we are winning the battle of getting a lot of things done after our offspring go to bed. Checking the time before we go to bed helps us know if we’re doing less badly than the night before, which feels a little like winning.

I gave him his binky and he quickly fell back asleep. I also know he woke up again, and that he wailed lustily and loudly as his father and I had to resort to the process of elimination to figure out exactly what he wanted. Did he want daddy to hold him? Did he want to suckle at the breast? Would he accept a binky? He bawled as we blundered away in the dark desperately trying to calm him down so we could get back to sleep and though we are ignorant about many things, we do know that the wailing of an unhappy child expands time, turning minutes into hours, which is probably why you think you endured an hours-long aural blitzkrieg. Not a moment too soon we realized that it was water that our baby wanted. After a few gulps from his bottle he gratefully fell asleep nestled between his stupid besotted parents. But until you helpfully slipped your note under our door we didn’t know how much it actually bothered anyone besides us.

I feel like this account conflicts a little with what you imagined us to be doing as our baby cried. You seem to think we were at best passively lying in bed listening to our baby wail the same way some people listen to white noise or at worst actively cheering him on like groupies at a heavy metal concert.

I don’t think you actually know how long our baby cried or how long he could have gone on. He can go for hours when he is teething but last night it was most likely five minutes at best, ten minutes at worst. Honestly, I think you are lucky. Just last week he woke up at four in the morning and never went back to bed.

Did I mention that our five-year-old slept through what you seem to think was the endless keening of a thousand banshees? By the way, this is not the first time we’ve stayed at a hotel with our baby. Do you know how many people slipped notes under our door to inform us that our baby is loud and wakeful? No one! Either all these people were simply not helpful enough to point out our parenting flaws, or everyone else is just as daft as we are. Or maybe there’s something else going on.

You are the one who decided to stay in the small but busy downtown area of Portland, Maine at a hotel full of people. People are fucking noisy. Some fuck noisily. Some fall asleep with the TV on. Some listen to music very loudly. It was snowing all night. Do you know how snow plows sound in the middle of the night? What if there was an emergency? What if someone mixed their meds and drowned in the hotel’s pool? What if you had to listen to sirens all night as the ambulance, fire department and police parked outside your room? What would you have done? Who would you have sent a note to?

Maybe this is all a huge mistake and you slipped this note to the wrong family? At this very moment there could be a family sitting in the dining room that did throw a real rager last night, with their five-year-old having pillow fights as their teen played a little Call of Duty at full volume, all while they were crying-it-out sleep training their infant triplets. They might be enjoying their morning with no knowledge of the distress they caused you. They could be still eating breakfast. If you go to the dining room right now you might be able to find them and Have a Word. Or better yet, don’t. 

The nocturnal noise my family emitted was negligible, even preferable, given the alternatives, but if you can’t handle the annoying but not aberrational sounds of ordinary human existence then perhaps you shouldn’t stay in places with humans. Perhaps you who should ask the hotel for a room far away from other people. Just something to think about next time. In the meantime I recommend getting some coffee.

Have a great day. =)