Last night/early this morning my son was having trouble sleeping. It all started around 12:30 a.m., but who is counting anyways. So we brought him into bed, and the adventure began. The next time I realized he was awake, 2:07 a.m. Keep in mind that I am not very good at waking up, so he may have been awake for longer. You would have to ask my wife to know for sure. But he wakes up and doesn't want to go back to sleep, my wife and I are synchronized at this time, and think he must be hungry. So he eats, and we hope he will be going back to sleep in no time. My wife puts him into his crib after he is done eating and seems to be asleep, but he decides.... Well he decides it isn't time for sleep.
Now the story starts. So my wife and I have been having our son sleep in our bed for a variety of reasons after he wakes up at night. Mostly because he has been having so many ear infections, and we feel like if he is sick or in pain, the least we can do is provide some relief in the form of being close to mom and dad, mostly mom, ok almost all mom.
But we also understand that this habit has got to stop. So we have tinkered around with letting him cry while in his crib, in an effort to get him to soothe himself back to sleep. The hard part here for me, is that I do not do well with listening to him cry. That being said, I have to hear him crying, then be woken up by it, then I don't like it and want to help him be comfortable. Which means I remove him from his crib, and take him to his mom awaiting further instruction.
But right now he has an ear infection, so in my mind standard protocol dictates that he take his rightful location between me and his mother. See this works out well for me because she soothes him and I end up falling back asleep. Good for me, but not that great of a deal for my wife.
So here we are, 2:07 and my wife begins logical communication with me around our new intended course of action, but it is 2:08 now and my mind is only capable of digesting what I had programmed in prior to going to sleep, which was if he wakes up, he goes between us, I go to sleep and my wife takes care of the rest. So the new course of action my wife is proposing is being rejected by my still sleeping mind.
Let the frustration and confusion ensue. After about 60 seconds of rational logic persuasion my wife realizes that my course is set, and really unwavering. Keep in mind, my brain is still asleep, which is why I am choosing the course of most resistance. I tell my wife that I have everything under control and that he will be asleep in no time. She is frustrated and willing to give me more rope... 2:37 a.m.
2:40 a.m. my wife uses her veto power and decides that instead of negotiating she is taking action. We head upstairs to our California King bed for all of us to get settled in and go to sleep. 3:00 a.m. he is still not sleeping and I have made the mistake of getting a little to comfortable, my wife senses this and immediately holds me accountable to our solidarity promise (no matter what we do, we do it together). I quickly try and justify my actions as simply settling in for the long haul, she calls my bs and knows I was on my way down. Next thing I know I am over compensating by deciding it is a good idea to rock our little man to sleep 3:07 a.m. At around 3:25 I return to bed with our little guy still with a full head of steam. Nice work I know! From here it is a blur, only that I know I will not make the mistake of blinking for too long... Sometime around 3:45 I think he went to sleep, I didn't have the energy to check in with the clock.
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