My wife had provided clear instructions before she left the house to go shopping with our daughter. “Sit on the play mat with him. Put the bottle in front of him and see if he plays with it. If he does, tilt it to help him drink. Don’t try to make him. If a half hour passes, and he hasn’t, warm up the bottle and keep trying.” This was good. I like clear instructions. Though, of course, clear instructions only work out if everything goes according to plan. We’re trying to help our son transition to taking a bottle. Six months old and so far he’s solely enjoyed the feast that is breastfeeding. But my wife’s leave is coming to an end. We’re going to have to let others watch him, and if others are watching him, they’ll have to be able to bottle-feed him. So far, however, he doesn’t like bottle in any way, shape, or form.

We’ve been trying for two weeks to get him to take one. My wife has purchased just about every children’s cup conceivable to see if one will work. She’s done her research. But my children’s parents are two strong-willed, at times, stubborn people, and it’s turns out, the apple doesn’t fall far. He’ll chew on a cap or nipple and take a little milk in his mouth. But most of it ends up on his bib. Whenever we put anything that isn’t a human nipple close to his lips, they clamp up, he turns his head, and if we insist, he’ll throw his version of a fit, essentially tears and fussing. This has caused my wife distress, which I understand. At the same, our son is not going to starve. “Let him go hungry,” I’ve suggested. “He’ll break down and take it.” My wife didn’t like this idea at first. But on Friday, after going without eating 6 hours, our son broke down and took two ounces from the bottle with my wife feeding him. And on Saturday morning, it was my turn.

“He has to learn to take it from someone else,” my wife explained. “It can’t be me.” Which makes sense. He already sees her as food. He has to learn that other people can be food too. So there I was on the play mat with my son propped in a sitting position in front of me, the bottle with freshly-pumped milk sitting before him. “Watch a show or something,” my wife advised. “You don’t have to sit there doing nothing.” Instead of putting on something mindless, I’d opted for The Forgotten Plague, a documentary about the evolution of tuberculosis in America. And everything started well. My son played with the bottle. He picked it up a few times and started to bite at the top. I tilted it back so he could drink, and a bit dribbled out the sides of his mouth. He seemed receptive for about three minutes. Then he lost interest. Then he picked it up again, upside down and threw it on the mat. Then he started to cry. This went on for about an hour, and I sat back and exercised patience. It’s okay, I told myself. It’s going to take time and effort.

My son, by this point, was a mess. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. Thick streams of snot were coming out of his nose. Mucous bubbles were blowing up and bursting from his nostrils. He’d let the milk dribble out, not just on his bib, but his chin, his neck, his cheeks, his shirt. I stood up and started to rock him and tried to wipe his nose, and he turned away. He hates having his nose wiped as well, and he’ll do anything to avoid it. And when I placed the napkin square over his schnoz and stole his boogers away, he really lit into me. He was racked with the type of sobs you only ever see in children. You know, the type where their whole body heaves and they can hardly catch their breath?

Now I’m not sure if this is universal in hospitals. But after my daughter and son were born, before they let us take them home, we had to watch an instructional video about shaken baby syndrome. I remember the first time around, with my daughter, I thought, who on earth would shake a baby? Doesn’t everyone know you don’t do that? But a few weeks later, middle of the night, my daughter howling inconsolably in my ear for some reason unbeknownst to me, I realized why they show this video to everyone. I’m pretty sure that unless one has the patience of a Tibetan monk, most parents have had to remind themselves at one time or other (though of course we’re never supposed to cop to it): “Don’t shake the baby.”  (People who haven’t parented are sitting there shaking their heads judging me; people who have are nodding their heads going, I’ve been there). And as I sat trying to cheer him up, I sang, “Warm up the milk and don’t shake the baby…” and he giggled and danced.

We entered our second hour like this. In the background, I’m listening to people recount their joy when a treatment for tuberculosis was discovered. In the meantime, I’m getting messages from my wife: “Done at Trader Joe’s. Should I kill more time?” No, I reply, it’s not working at all. “Okay,” she writes back. “He’s not getting anything else but what is in the bottle. So when I get home I’m just going to sit with him and it.” And though her message is benign in tone, I’m taking it as judgment. I have failed to interest my son in drinking from a bottle.

He’s hungry and crying, and I’m flustered and my back is starting to ache. But I try again. I warm the bottle, and he drinks an ounce. Or more realistically, he drinks half an ounce and let’s another half spill out the sides of his mouth. I hear the car in the driveway. My wife and daughter come in. “Here,” my wife says, “Go put the groceries away, I’ll take over.” So I go in the kitchen. I’m exhausted, and all I’ve been doing for the last two hours is sitting with my kid, trying to feed him and listening to him cry. I put the Jaipur vegetables on the shelf, find a spot in the freezer for the hash browns, and I peek back in the living room. My wife is sitting on the play mat with our son cradled in her arms. He’s sucking at the bottle like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

My wife smiles and laughs. “Well it’s been about six hours since his last feeding. That’s usually his breaking point.”

But hey, at least I learned about the effects tuberculosis had on society and science, right? Well, I caught the gist anyway.