The occasion was, believe it or not, a mistake on my part. Abby is noisy when she plays. She "talks" to her toys and to the world in general with a variety of sounds, some of which are similar to her hunger cues. She'll roll onto her belly and squawk furiously at some object or another. The important thing is that she is not actually upset. In fact, to move her would draw her ire. She is playing with that toy, after all.
So she was laying on her stomach, nose-to-nose with that strange baby in the shiny triangle part of the clicky pyramid toy. (Notably the strange baby was making exactly the same sounds at exactly the same time as she was). Well, dear old first-time dad thought that she was merely engaging in a heated discussion of some sort, when in fact she was building up a full head of ravenous. Now its important to keep in mind that I am (was?) actually very good at predicting when she is getting hungry, so I always have a bottle warmed and ready to go as soon as she shows even the slightest sign that she is ready to eat. She has, consequently, come to expect a bottle as soon as it occurs to her that the big empty has returned to her belly.
Well in this particular instance, I was taken a little by surprise and had no warm bottle handy. So she's been fussing for food for a good ten minutes when I realize that she's hungry, and its another three minutes or so until I've got the bottle ready. By this time she is completely apopletic. Her face is red. High-pitched cries alternate with those jagged intakes of breath that show that she really means it.
Needless to say I was a bit taken a back. I have only seen this reaction from her a couple of times. And whenever I do, it is strange enough and intense enough that I briefly entertain the thought that something is horribly wrong with her and that I should immediately call 911. Just thinking about it as I write this has caused my heart-rate to jump. I mean it really hits you in a deep and primal place. But this time, I was able to chase the panic reaction away a little sooner, so I could observe her reaction.
Once I did get the bottle to her, she was so angry that she wouldn't or couldn't eat. After holding her and speaking softly to her for a minute, I managed to distract her a bit with the clown toy. After that the anger ebbed, and she was ready to eat. Interestingly, the thought that crossed my mind at the time was that there was little to no agency in her anger reaction. She was a patient. She didn't get angry; rather, the angry got her. It's something that happened to her. It would be easy to chalk this up to the immaturity of her nervous system, but it is more likely that anger and emotions in general work that way in adults, too.
Anyway, all's well that ends well, and the whole thing was over in ten minutes. A full-bellied baby sleeping contentedly in the nook of her chastened daddy's arm.
But someday, I'll have to talk to her about that temper.
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