My Newborn Baby Cried All Day No Matter What We Did – What I Found in His Crib Made My Blood Boil

Nothing prepares Lawrence for the truth that awaits him in the crib when he goes home to find his wife inconsolable and his newborn son crying.

A parent must unravel a web of lies in order to preserve what is most important in a race against time and treachery.

Lawrence is my name. I’m twenty-eight years old, and yesterday completely upended my existence.

You constantly assume you’ll be able to spot problems. that instincts will take over and your stomach will scream.

However, I didn’t see it.

I returned home shortly after six o’clock. Before I had left the mudroom, I heard the garage door creak shut behind me, just like it would on any other night. Somewhere in the house, Aiden was crying out. It was more than the usual colicky tantrum or fussing of a newborn.

This was the type of yelling that tightened its grip on your chest.

I dropped my laptop bag on the entryway table and said, “Claire?”

No response.

Her hands concealed her face. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot when she eventually looked up.

Whispering, “Oh my goodness, Lawrence,” she said. “It’s been like this all day…”

My heart tightened as I said, “He’s been crying all day?”

I took my wife’s hand and moved closer. It was chilly and a little moist, as if she had lost all of her warmth. She appeared worn out, but not in a bodily sense.

It was deeper, as if something had begun to fray within her.

I responded softly, “Okay,” attempting to bring us both into balance. “Let’s go see what’s going on. We’ll figure this out together, my love.”

Her voice grew softer as we proceeded down the corridor.

Whispering, “I had to leave the room,” she said. “The crying… it really got to me.”

I glanced over and noticed her look. Claire glanced… scared. There was more to it than what was going on with Aiden. I told myself it was simply fatigue.

Even the strongest folks had a tendency to lose it when they were around newborns.

The noise got worse when we entered the nursery. The silence was broken by Aiden’s screams, which shook the walls like broken glass.

The window curtains were open, letting in an excessively hot and dazzling stream of sunshine across the crib. I walked across the room and shut them, letting a gentle, subdued gray fill the room.

“Hey, buddy,” I said quietly, attempting to maintain my composure. “Daddy’s here now.”

I began humming as I leaned over the cot; it was a familiar, low song that I had sang the night he came home from the hospital. I thought I would feel the contour of his small body beneath the blanket when I reached for it, but instead I felt… Nothing.

A tiny black dictaphone sat in my son’s place, blinking steadily. There was a folded piece of paper beside it.

“Wait! Where’s my baby?!” Claire exclaimed, gasping for oxygen.

I pushed the recorder’s stop button. The silence in the room was so total that it made my ears ring.

With shaking hands, I unfurled the note.

I glanced over the phrases, each one piercing my back like a knife.

“If you want to see your baby again, leave $200,000 in the luggage storage lockers by the pier. Locker 117.” “I told you that you would regret being rude to me.”

You won’t ever see him again if you call the police.

Even though the words were already ingrained in my memory, I looked down at the page and read it again, more slowly this time. I gripped the note’s edge tightly, my fingers shaking.

My ears began to buzz, and I started to feel sick.

Claire said, “I don’t understand,” in a whisper. “Who would do this? Why would someone…?”

I took a while to respond. One moment suddenly made sense to me while I was frantically searching over the previous few weeks.

Quietly, “I think I know,” I whispered. “Chris, the janitor from the maternity floor. Do you remember him?”

Claire gave a headshake. She appeared on the verge of fainting.

“I accidentally knocked over this stupid bear-shaped cookie jar while he was cleaning. I was waiting to tell one of the nurses that you wanted some custard. He glared at me like I’d personally insulted his bloodline. He said something — something about me regretting it.”

“I don’t know, Claire. Maybe? But he’s the only one who’s even come close to a threat.”

“We need to go to the police,” I murmured, tucking the paper into my jacket pocket after folding it.

“No!” Claire grabbed my arm and reached out. “Lawrence, we can’t. The note said that if we call them, we’ll never see Aiden again. He might be watching us right now…”

“We can’t just do nothing, Claire,” I yelled. “We don’t even know if this is real. What if it’s a bluff? If it’s him, maybe they can trace it. That man may have done this before. We need justice. We need our son back.”

“Please, Lawrence. We’ll pay. I’ll do whatever they want! Let’s get the money. Let’s do it!” Claire yelled.

She seemed rushed… There was a sense of rehearsal. I didn’t want to overthink it, though. I made an effort not to.

“Okay,” I replied. “Let’s go.”

Silently, we headed to the bank. With her arms folded over her stomach, my wife sat slouched in the passenger seat. Unfocused, as though her thoughts had been disconnected from the world around her, she gazed out the window.

After ten minutes or so, she abruptly turned.

“Pull over. Now.”

“What?” I questioned, beginning to slow down. “What’s wrong?”

“Please pull over now,” Claire said again.

She pushed the door open and staggered onto the sidewalk just as I was easing onto the shoulder and putting it in park.

I went out to assist, but she dismissed me with a wave.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat following the second pause.

Whispering, “I can’t do this, Lawrence,” she said. “I can’t go with you. I feel like I’m going to throw up again just thinking about it. I can’t…”

I looked at her for a while.

“Do you want me to take you home?” I responded.

After we arrived home, I gave Claire a forehead kiss, wrapped the blankets around her, and assisted her in walking to bed.

“I’ll call you the second I know anything.”

She didn’t answer. Her face was turned to the wall, and her eyes were already closed.

I made an effort to control my thoughts once I was back in the car. I concentrated on breathing, the road, and the sensation of the driving wheel under my hands.

I asked for a sizable cash withdrawal at the bank. When I presented the number to the teller, his eyes widened.

“Then give me that,” I murmured, my voice hardly able to contain the stress. “I need it immediately.”

After giving a nod, the teller started working on the request.

He said softly, “Are you in trouble, sir?” “We have people on hand to discuss —”

“No, no,” I replied, not sure if I was acting appropriately. “I just need to make a payment urgently. That’s why I need the cash. That’s all.”

However, with his mother less than fifteen feet away, how was I supposed to explain that my baby had been abducted from his crib?

Like something from a heist film, they brought it out in bundles, stacked and secured with bands. It still didn’t look right. Too little. It’s too light.

In the hopes that it would buy time or trick someone into making a mistake, I put it in a black gym bag, zipped it shut, and drove to the pier.

The lockers were hardly signposted and located in a dim hallway behind a souvenir shop. After putting the luggage in locker 117 and locking it, I decided to hide behind a parked delivery vehicle and left.

Wearing a large pair of sunglasses and a tie-dye shirt, the janitor appeared to be conducting errands as he walked toward the lockers.

He didn’t even look around. He approached the locker, opened it by jiggling the lock, and grabbed the bag.

All I could do was follow him.

Chris had just turned around close to the vending machines in the terminal when I got up to him. I wasted no time.

I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him back against the tiled wall, yelling, “Where’s my son?” He had dropped the gym bag, and I noticed a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

“You took my son,” I growled. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. The locker, the bag, the fake crying — was that your idea?”

The janitor raised his hands defensively.

“I didn’t take anyone! I swear! I was paid to move a bag. I got the instructions in my work locker, along with some cash. That’s all I know. I don’t even know who hired me. Look, man. I’m a janitor — I’ll do whatever I can for some extra money. I was told to come here and get this bag from locker 117.”

He appeared frightened.

“I was instructed to leave the bag back in my work locker… someone was going to pick it up. I was told not to open it.”

I hesitated for a second as his voice broke on the final few lines.

I released him.

I glanced back at Chris before I could do anything. He was still there. His hands were rubbing together as if he was unsure of what to do with them as he stood motionless close to the lockers. I gently made my way back to him.

“What?” Chris inquired, his expression cautious.

“You muttered something. After I accidentally dropped the cookie jar. Something about regret. What did you mean?”

“Man… I wasn’t going to say anything. It wasn’t my business,” he replied.

Chris lowered his voice and moved his weight.

“That day, I was collecting trash on the maternity floor. Room 212, your wife’s room.”

He hesitated. As he said that, his eyes darted to the side, avoiding my face.

I said, “Ryan?” but I knew already.

“I didn’t know who he was at the time. But I recognized him in the hallway later, laughing with one of the nurses. That’s when I realized he looked like you. That’s when I pieced it together. He’s your brother, right?”

I remained silent.

Chris went on, “I didn’t know what to do,” “I was just there to take out the bin. I didn’t say anything to anyone. But when you bumped into me, I looked at you, and it just came out. That you’d regret this. I didn’t mean it like a threat. I just… I knew.”

He gave me an almost pitying gaze.

“Would you have believed me?”

I didn’t respond.

All of the previous day’s events finally began to make sense.

Claire’s insistence that the police shouldn’t be called. The way she gripped her stomach out of nerves rather than sadness. She had pleaded with me to go by myself.

Over the past year, her distance has increased. And that one disagreement from months ago that had suddenly come up again: the one in which she expressed her frustration and tears that she didn’t think I could ever conceive her.

I didn’t waste any more time. I raced to the hospital and discovered Aiden’s physician, Dr. Channing, thumbing through his phone by the vending machines in the entrance.

Seeing me, he grinned and said, “Lawrence,”

“I need your help,” I pleaded. “Call my wife. Tell her that you were reviewing some results and that there’s an emergency with Aiden. Tell her he needs to come here right away.”

I told him everything, including about my own brother’s involvement in my son’s abduction.

She came twenty minutes later. Claire had Aiden in her arms as she entered the room. with my younger brother, Ryan, by her side.

They appeared to be entering a location as a family.

My palms clenched into fists, and I remained in the darkness for another beat. I gave the two officers I had spoken to earlier a little signal as I moved forward. Just two local police officers who had taken me seriously, no FBI.

They didn’t hesitate to approach.

Claire shielded Aiden with her arms and said, “Wait! He’s sick! He needs medical attention! I’m his mother…”

“No,” I answered as I approached. “He’s absolutely fine. I just asked Dr. Channing to lie to get you to bring him in. You faked… everything.”

Ryan avoided looking into my eyes and instead looked down.

“Then why stay married to me?”

Flatly, “Because you were safe,” she said. “You had the job, the house, and you were the responsible one.”

“You passed Aiden off as my son.”

“We didn’t think it would matter, Lawrence. The child needs to grow up with money. You have that. We were going to take the $200,000 and start our lives together.”

“So you didn’t just lie. You wanted to steal from me. My son… and my money,” I remarked after inhaling deeply.

Claire gritted her teeth and whispered, “He’s not your son, Lawrence,”

I gazed at Aiden as she sobbed in her arms.

“According to his birth certificate, I am, Claire. I’m the only father he will ever have, and I won’t let either of you hurt him again.”

Claire said something again, but I couldn’t hear her as the officers pulled her back. No more. For my youngster, all I had were eyes and ears.

His screams were no longer piercing or frightened. They were now gentle whimpers, worn out and unsure, and they made me feel something instinctive.

I moved forward and embraced him tenderly. He clung to the material of my shirt with a firmness that was out of proportion to his size, and he was warmer and lighter than I remembered.

As if he recalled me too, he moved, pressing his head on my collarbone. The sobbing ceased as his body relaxed.

Dr. Channing showed up next to us.

“Let’s give him a quick exam, Lawrence,” he replied. “Just to be sure he’s alright.”

I nodded and continued to hug Aiden close as I followed him down the hallway.

I was not going to let go, no matter what happened next. Not right now. Never.