"Jesse, please stop. Please stop crying, baby. Please. I'm beggin' you."
Amanda Rollins was ready to quit. Not at Special Victims though – God knew the job was probably the only thing that kept her sane these days. No, Amanda was ready to quit motherhood.
From the moment she'd taken Jesse out of her sitter's arms after returning home from the precinct, the little girl had been screaming at the top of her lungs as if she was being skinned alive. Her precious little face, usually full of smiles, was contorted and flaming red, with drool running out of the corner of her mouth and dripping onto the front of her mother's shirt.
In the early stages of the night, Amanda had been able laugh her baby's foul mood off; this was back when she'd still been confident that with a little bit of cuddling and rocking Jesse would eventually calm down.
Upon studying her daughter's scrunched up face a little more closely, Amanda had also come to the conclusion that her baby looked a bit like an angry garden gnome – grumpy, yet undeniably adorable. However, the longer the hours of aural torture stretched, the less the sweet comparison seemed to fit.
Now, four hours and equally as many cups of coffee later, Amanda looked at her chubby, red-faced baby girl and all she saw was the devil incarnate. She kept wondering how she could've been stupid enough to believe that she could do this. Raising a child on my own...what the hell was I thinking?
The blonde had spent the last hour carrying the little bundle of rage around, bouncing her up and down, trying to get her to sleep or at least to quiet down for longer than five minutes. Nothing she did seemed to be working and Amanda was at the end of her rope. All she had wanted was a relaxed evening after a long day at work, but it looked like she was in for a sleepless night and several angry knocks from her immediate neighbors instead.
She shifted the baby on her hip and tried to get her to accept the pacifier for the millionth time, but the little girl wouldn't take it, leaning away from the desperate blonde and turning her head to the side as if she was being offered raw liver. Amanda sighed deeply and dropped the pacifier on the kitchen counter, looking at Jesse in frustration, her voice tripping over itself in exhaustion.
"What do you want from me, huh, baby? Just tell me and I'll give it to you, I swear. All I want in return is some silence. Can you do that for mama...please?"
Amanda was vaguely aware that trying to negotiate a peace treaty with a six month-old would by some be considered step one of her descent into mommy madness, but the tired detective didn't care. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
She decided to try the bottle again, hoping that by some miracle her daughter had changed her mind since her last attempt a mere forty-five minutes ago. The blonde warmed up the formula and sat down in the recliner with Jesse in the crook of her arm.
It would be an understatement to say that Jesse was not a fan. The little girl screeched like a bat and raised her tiny balled-up fists over her head while pushing her legs into her mother's stomach, her body tense and rigid in Amanda's arm.
"Come on, baby girl," Amanda cooed, trying to hide the strained wobble in her voice, "you have to help me a little. It's not like I'm trying to poison you." A mild smile crept onto her lips. "You know, whenever Uncle Fin wants your mama to shut up, he just shoves a donut in her face. If it works with me, it should be working with you, too."
To her utter delight, Jesse suddenly stopped fighting and latched on to the bottle. Silence spread its comforting wings over the apartment and Amanda let out a long, relieved breath. She looked at the little angel in her arms and snorted. "So all it took for you to behave was mentioning uncle Fin, do I have this right?"
