Teen Dad Series

Changing Diapers (Michael & Kol)

  It had been ten minutes. Michael had only had Kol for ten minutes and he was already crying. This was such a bad idea already, he should call someone for help. Call one of the numbers at the bottom of this letter and send this baby back to wherever it came from or something. Michael wasn't cut out for this. The fact that this baby burst in to tears at just the sight of him made it obvious enough for him. Michael couldn't do this.
Or maybe he could. For one night at least. He could take care of Kol until the morning. No foster agency would be up at this time of night anyway. He could survive one night. Right?
"Are you hungry?" Michael asked, scrambling for the bottle in the pocket of the diaper bag. He read the instructions taped to it and went to heat up the bottle. Kol refused the bottle every time Michael tried to give it to him. So no, he wasn't hungry. But he was still crying. "You're tired aren't you?" Michael bounced Kol just slightly, hoping that he could somehow coheres the baby into slumber. But to no avail, Kol was still wide awake five minutes after that little attempt.
Then the smell appeared. Or it was always there and Michael was just now getting past the crying to notice it. Either way, he could pretty much figure out why Kol was crying now. Dirty diapers would make Michael cry too.
"Alright, there's a clean diaper somewhere in here." Michael mumbled, searching through the diaper bag with a heavy sigh. If someone had told him that morning he'd be changing diapers, he would have laughed and then steered clear of that person in hopes to not catch their crazy. But here he was. Changing diapers. And Kol was clearly not having any of it.
At first, he just wiggled and squirmed and whimpered, but the tears come back with full force in no time. He screamed and fought as much as he could, kicking his legs around and twisting away from Michael with clear distaste. This was turning out to be a lot more difficult than he thought.
"Dude, it's just a diaper, would you relax? I swear I'm just trying to help here." Michael exhaled sharply, running his fingers through his hair in distress. Changing a diaper should not take thirty minutes or longer. Even if he'd never done it before. It was pretty self-explanatory, right? So why was he having such a hard time?
"You're driving me crazy." Michael said in a sing-song tone. It caught Kol's attention instantly. All at once, the crying and the moving around stopped as he gazed up at Michael expectantly. "Oh, you like singing." Michael grinned, racking his brain for an appropriate song to sing. He settled on Fall Out Boy, deciding that appropriateness wouldn't matter since Kol was so young.
Okay, so maybe he could do this. He could at least try for a while and see how it goes