A Hostage Situation

As parents we try to teach our children (yes, there are two now) good habits and behavior. We try to get them on regular eating/feeding schedules and limit television time. We dissuade them from sleeping in our bed and encourage them to self-soothe and fall asleep on their own (within reason).

All that goes out the window when our kids wake up in the middle of the night screaming. At that point they are terrorists, holding our night's sleep hostage, and we are willing to give them anything to get it back. All those good habits we've spent months instilling in them go out the window.

Hungry? Sure. We'll feed you anything. You want to fall asleep on my lap in front of infomercials at 2 AM? No problem - as long as you get back to sleep. You want to sleep in mommy and daddy's room? Sure - Assume the position:

Cribthumping

We used to have a routine. Baby would go to bed at 9 or 10 and we'd hear him jumping in his crib by 5 or 6 the next morning. At that time I'd go get him and bring him back to the bed where the wife would feed him and he'd fall back asleep. Earlier this week we decided to cut out the morning feeding and replace it with a bottle. That was a horrible decision.

Now he wakes up at 3 and jumps in his crib until someone goes in there. So for the last few nights I've been in there with a bottle trying to get him back to sleep. Last night (early this morning), I realized that's not the right approach - I shouldn't be feeding him that early, I should be encouraging him to go back to sleep. Additionally, we can't have him jumping in the crib at 3 in the morning - we've got neighbors who would probably like some sleep.

So I started something new - Cribthumping

I knock him down

He gets back up again

I'm never going to keep him down

(repeat for a long time)

Basically when he jumped in the crib I knocked him down and he'd cry... until he got back up again. This went on and on until the wife came in and rescued him and sent me back to bed.

Personal Space

Baby and I are having some personal space issues. Allow me to cite two examples:

1 - Baby usually wakes up around 6 or 7 in the morning and I bring him back to the bed for breakfast. After the wife finishes feeding him, we are both too exhausted to take him back to the crib, so we allow him to sleep between us. "Between us" usually turns into "underneath me." The kid always ends up on my side of the bed, no matter where he starts. The wife says it's because I weigh more than her, so he just naturally falls into me. I think she's secretly pushing him to my side.

2 - Last night I was using the restroom (#1) with the door open (wife's pet peeve) when all of a sudden I hear baby heading my way. So I'm standing there, doing my thing, when baby crawls between my legs and lifts himself up on the lid of the toilet bowl and starts looking in. He must've been fascinated by the bubbles. Well this is a pretty awkward situation for me, as I'm coming to the end of my flow, and trying desperately not to pee all over my firstborn's head. With a few deft maneuvers, I was able to wrap things up mostly without incident. I think I may have inadvertently sprinkled him a little, but he's doing fine today. I guess I should listen to my wife and close the door. Or get a urinal.

Two Nights of Peace

The last two nights have been incredibly peaceful. Now that my brother has moved next door, baby is back in his crib in his room.

Sunday night I didn't turn on the baby monitor in our room. In my sleepy stupor, I couldn't figure out why putting the power cord in the earphone jack did not recharge the battery so I could turn it on. I assumed it was broken. So at 7:20 Monday morning, when we finally heard baby crying, we got him to feed him. We'll never know how long he'd been crying or if he really made it through the night.

Last night the wife forgot to turn on the baby monitor in baby's room, so though I turned on the receiver in my room, it was futile. At 7:25 this morning we heard him crying so I went in to get him, but again, we don't know how long he had been crying or if this was the first time he'd woken up. I guess we could go next door and ask the boys there if they heard him, but I think it's better just not knowing.

I guess it's not great to have him unmonitored during his sleep. We wouldn't want something bad to happen to him, of course. But every morning he's still alive - so far so good.

Infanticide (Again)

I know it's wrong to kill your children (though one could make the "I-brought-you-into-this-world-I-can-take-you-out" argument), but DANG last night sucked.

My wife went to bed around 10 last night, but I stayed up till midnight finishing some work and watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones never gets old. So around 3:45, baby started screaming and I turned on the white noise. He's sleeping in a Pack-n-Play in our room since my brother is in his room. He'd quiet down a little bit, and then if either of us moved in bed, even the slightest, he'd freak out.

At 5:00 he was still crying and my iPod broke. It just stopped playing the noise. The kid's incessant crying outlasted Steve Jobs. From 5 to 5:30 the silence of the night was often interrupted by baby's wailing. At 5:30, the wife decided that the 6 am rule could be broken, and she brought him to bed and fed him.

A few hours later, I am up and working. Not a great night for sleep.

Confessions of a Bad Dad - The Bed

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned. It's been 1 day since my last confession.

As I've mentioned before, we do not get baby out of bed until 6 in the morning for his breakfast feeding. Then he usually falls asleep between us in bed, and wakes up anytime between 8 and 10. By then the wife is at work and I'm usually out on the couch doing work, so neither of us are aware of the exact moment he wakes up. Usually he'll make some noise that I'll hear, and I'll go in and get him. Recently though, he's found a new way to get my attention. He rolls/crawls/jumps off the bed, hits the floor, and starts screaming.

This happened last weekend and again this morning. He seems to be alright again - all of his limbs are functioning, there are no visible bruises, and only one scratch.

Maybe we should figure out a better system.

Sleep

So this morning baby woke up crying at 4:24 am. Wife says that we no longer go in to his room once he's down, so we both get to hear him cry for a while. Then in between his cries, we hear another baby crying. Baby #2 lives in the room above our baby, and is freaking out. We wonder if our baby woke him up, or if baby #2 woke ours up. The world may never know - it's basically a chicken and the egg scenario.

As I've mentioned, we live in an apartment complex, so I am not 100% comfortable letting our child "cry it out" in the middle of the night. For this reason we have started playing white noise really loudly in baby's room when he's crying himself to sleep. We're hoping this white noise will drown out baby's cries so our neighbors will only be able to hear really loud nothingness. The iPod we use for the white noise only has sleep timer settings of 15, 30, and 60 minutes. I chose 60 minutes two nights ago and was scolded for doing so. This morning I chose 30 minutes and started the white noise around 5:10 am once it was pretty evident that baby was going to be crying for a while.

We've established 6 am as baby's earliest allowable wake up time. Basically I am not allowed to go get him and bring him in for breakfast until 6 am at the earliest. I thought though, that if he was still crying at 5:40 when the sleep timer shut down the white noise, that we could make an exception and bring him in a few minutes early (since by then he'd been crying for 1.5 hours). Wife said no - not a moment before 6.

So 5:40 comes, the white noise stops, the baby keeps crying, and I start counting the minutes. If the baby makes one peep after 6 am, I'm home free - I can bring him in, wife will feed him, and I can escape to the couch where I'll start my workday. Then baby will inevitably fall asleep in my spot on the bed and wife can get a few more hours of sleep until she has to leave for work.

5:45 comes: still crying.
5:50: intermittent sobs.
5:57: a couple random noises.
5:59: a strange gurgling sound.
6 am: silence.

The punk kid fell asleep in the dwindling seconds before his liberation. He was so close to freedom, and he could not pull it out. I guess he doesn't care that much, since he's sleeping again, but still - it's kind of annoying.

Musical Beds

When we travel with baby, we have him sleep in a PeaPod travel bed. It's comfortable and folds up easily into small size that we can put in a carry-on bag.

He usually sleeps well in the travel bed, or "tent" as we call it. Lately though, he's been waking up many times in the night (he's teething), so we're grateful if we can get him to sleep anywhere - even if it's in the bed between us. Neither of us enjoy that arrangement though - it gets a little cramped.

The hotel room here in Seattle has two double beds in it. When baby wakes up screaming in his tent, I bring him back to our bed. Once he's fallen asleep, wife and I get up out of the bed (leaving him in the middle), and go to the other bed. If baby wakes up again, I bring him over to our new bed, wait for him to fall asleep, and then we move back to the other bed. Repeat as needed.

Infanticide - Blood

So as I've mentioned, baby hasn't been sleeping well lately, which means that no one has been sleeping well. Doctor tells us just to let him cry and he'll learn, but that's hard to do in an apartment complex with thin walls.

So last night after waking up with him (and putting him back down) three times, I was pretty annoyed when he started crying a few hours later. I got him and brought him out to the family room, thinking maybe I could get him to fall asleep on the couch.

As we're sitting on the couch, he starts playing with my face. He sticks his finger up my nose and with his razor-sharp fingernail he pierces the lining of my nostril and my nose starts gushing blood. True story - This kid is crazy. I stick some tissues up my nose, and get him to fall asleep until 6 AM when I can take him to mother for breakfast.

Now I get to pick dried bloody boogers all day.

Confessions of a Bad Dad - Pillow Fight / Infanticide

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned. It's been 1 day since my last confession.

We've been staying at wife's parents' house for the last few days and the place has been crazy busy with people. Last night we had 13 adults and 11 kids sleeping here. Wife and I slept on a random mattress in the family room with baby in the Pack 'n Play next to us.

Well, baby has been absolutely horrible at night lately. He'll wake up screaming at 3:30-4 AM and won't stop for anything. I try to comfort him; wife tries to comfort him, but nothing works, short of putting him in the bed between us. Needless to say, I am not very happy during these little episodes, and I often find myself being less than patient with baby. This has been going on for the last week or so, and last night was no exception.

So last night baby woke up screaming at 3:30, and I got up to calm him. I tucked him in, talked to him, and put his pacifier in. He got quiet for a few minutes, and then freaked out again. I became more annoyed. So I repeated my previous behavior, and he calmed down for a few minutes. So I got back on the mattress, hoping to get back to sleep. Well I think I may have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the baby was wailing at full volume, and I was off the mattress, kneeling next to the Pack 'n Play repeatedly hitting it hard with my pillow. Wife woke up and stopped me and yelled "what are you doing?"

"Trying to make the noise stop."