So Gabe has been teething for, um, how old is he now? Yeah, almost that long. He's up at least once every night, and most evenings are similar. First, the tiny cries. Like he's mostly asleep and considering whether or not he should wake up, but he's leaning toward waking up. Or not. He likes to keep it interesting. So, when it's my night, I usually wait for him to make up his mind. Which I probably will stop doing, because I begrudgingly admit that leaping up and taking him on when he's half asleep is usually the better option. But anyway... so, I wait. He inevitably will be quiet just enough that he fools me into drifting off before he whimpers again, just enough to wake me up and convince me that this could go on for hours and I should really get my warm clothes on and get it in gear.
So, after theoretically putting my clothes on correctly though they've mysteriously turned themselves backwards, inside out and flung themselves across the room to hide behind, say, the banana tree, I stumble to the kitchen and make a bottle. If I make a big bottle, he won't be the slightest bit hungry, but if I make a little bottle he'll be ravenous, so really, does it matter how much I make. Nine times out of ten, no it does not.
I take the bottle upstairs, obviously, attempting to not miss any steps on the way. Into his room to do the blind diaper change where he flings himself around, getting himself stuck on the diaper tabs and likely making sure the diaper is just so far off base that he can pee out of it. Then, once his sleeper suit and sleep sack are mostly back on, it's bottle time. If he's hungry (small bottle) he'll eat quickly, which means that I'll soon feel the dripping of a previously leak-free bottle all over the place and will have to adjust the bottle, making him scream like a banshee. If he's not hungry (huge bottle) he'll arch himself backwards, slamming his head right into the nearest hard surface. Screaming like a banshee.
So, either after the bottle or after the arching back, I'll flip him over and he'll go to sleep on my chest. Yay! Almost done. Or am I? Of course not. He'll be dead asleep, sleeping like, duh, a baby, and suddenly, his head itches. For entire minutes of scratching. Hours, possibly. Then, back to sleep like nothing ever happened. After the inevitable scratching, a few things could happen. Sometimes, no actual settling down occurs and the bottle gets popped back in. Maybe he'll eat, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll scream, maybe he won't. So, any number of flips around from bottle to chest occur until I think that he's surely asleep for good. With a possible bottle refill in there somewhere.
Anyway, I should know better, because mostly, when I stand up to transition him to the crib, he wakes up. Screams, maybe, but wakes up definitely. Then I snuggle him back to his false sense of security. But when I put that hand around his chest to lower him into the crib, he always knows what's happening and wakes up again, no matter how sleepy he was mere seconds before. So I plop him ever so gently into the crib anyway, rubbing, patting, thumping his back depending on the urgency of the crying. I cover him with his favorite fleecy blanket, which he may or may not get himself hopelessly tangled in, what with all the tossing, turning and flailing he does for no good reason.
Sometimes, I pick him back up and the whole bottle-snuggle-ease-into-the-crib thing happens again. Sometimes three times or more. Some times he quiets down, only to tune back up the second my hand leaves crib space. Some times he's at full-out snore, completely still, and even waits until I'm out of the room with my hand on the outer door knob when he cries again. Inevitably, though, it almost always end up with me giving him angry looks, mumbling threatening words, and trying to figure out which stage I should start with all over again.
But sometimes, okay, at some point every night, he'll actually commit to sleeping, and I can leave. Sometimes to get into bed and hear him cry for more, but if I'm really lucky, for him to stay asleep, only making the tiniest little coughs to keep me awake for the next hour or so.
Rinse and repeat every four hours or so, and that's been nearly every night since, say January. Good times. But Jeff and I share the baby love, switching nights so we only have murderous urges every other night, and someday, it'll only be once in a while. So we'll take the advice of every other parent we've met with older kids and enjoy the time that he's a baby, crying for no good reason and waking us up at any old hour of the night to make us jump through hoops so he can get the sleep he needs. Right. Because we'll miss these late-night "feedings" and all those cute little baby things he does. Uh-huh.
And again I say, he's lucky he's cute and that humans don't eat their young.
* Oh yeah, I forgot to mention before that Alex sometimes wakes up during all of Gabey's drama. She'll scream, Jeff (or I) will go calm her down while trying to get Gabey to calm down too. Fun times two!
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