Guilt.  Racking dad guilt…

Set the Wayback Machine for 8:45pm last night.  Daphne had just fallen asleep after her bottle/bath, as per usual.  We came downstairs and watched about 15 minutes of “Making a Murderer” before Jen began to pass out on the couch.  So we called it a night too, and headed to bed.

Now, I often enjoy watching the odd bit of YouTube/Netflix on my iPad before I fall asleep, and last night I wanted to continue my binge watching of Daredevil, which has been awesome so far.  That said, I’m a bit leery of the whole horns/billy club thing that I’m seeing in the advertisements. I really like how he’s been portrayed so far (through the first 5 episodes), as just a guy behind a black mask.  Less superhero-y.

Anyway, the problem I often run into here is that the signal from the baby monitor camera upstairs tends to short out whenever I use the wi-fi near it.  And when this signal shorts out, the monitor’s video output screen makes a truly awful beeping noise which wakes up both my wife and my dog.

So last night, given that it was only 10:15 and Daphne never wakes up before 11:30, I simply shut off the baby monitor, and put my earbuds in so I could watch Daredevil and so the rest of the room could sleep.

And you now know exactly where this is going.

An hour later, after I’d finished the episode, I took my headphones off, booted up the baby monitor…

This what what I expected to see…

And was instantly bombarded with tiny, strained screams of terror.

She had woken up at some point during the show, and had been crying for long enough to make her little voice hoarse.  I didn’t hear her because I had earbuds in, and Jen didn’t hear her because I’d shut off the monitor.

I sprinted upstairs, leaping about 5 steps at a time, burst through the door and scooped her up.  She let me have it for about 5 minutes, then she calmed down, I gave her a bottle, and she went back to sleep.

But that guilt man…  That stuff lay heavy on me for the rest of the night.

My daughter was crying for me, and I didn’t come.

Yeah, don’t think I’ll be watching any more Daredevil in bed.

j.s.