A Wail of a Night
It’s 3:14 AM. I have a six-month-old ringing my ears with wailing cries.
Is he being kidnapped?
Nope – just hungry. Or hangry. He gets that from my wife.
Are you familiar with the film The Incredibles? Well, he’s the baby in the movie. Super sweet 99% of the time. Up until his middle of the night feeding. Then he morphs into an inferno.
My wife decided that at the six-month mark we’ll begin to introduce sleep training tactics.
I mean I get it. She’s the one that’s dealing with the brunt of the middle of the night feedings. She’s the one nursing. I tried, but our baby didn’t latch on. Whatever, I tend to give up easily.
Besides, the pediatrician insisted that at this age, he’s fully capable of sleeping through the night. In other words, the baby’s got us wrapped around his little finger. Wailing at 3:00 AM purely from habit and just to show us who’s boss.
But no more my infantile friend…
Apparently there’s a whole method to this sleep training madness. You basically leave your baby in their crib to exacerbate themselves to a point where they ultimately, wave the white flag out of their crib and knock back out. Over the course of the next few days, the length of the cries begin to shorten, until they basically don’t expect the feeding anymore. Surrender, you’ve won!
See, the problem comes down to having the patience to listen to these cries for 30-60 minutes consistently. Cries that manage to reach the abyss of your ear canals. It’s like waiting for the arrival of a hurricane – you’re entirely aware of the magnitude and impact that’s about to ensue – and you’ve managed to prepare accordingly – but at this point, you just need to wait it out.
In our case, my wife breastfeeds, which requires me to pop in every 10-15 minutes or so to help soothe him. That way he won’t recognize her scent and start shooting nuclear missiles at us. He’s got this crazy radar detection working for him; she can literally be gone for an hour, come home and instantly his head perks up like his UberEats delivery has arrived.
I’m still unsure if my entrance into his room is more like Santa or the Grinch on Christmas Eve.
Last night was our first attempt at introducing our new tactical approach. Like some World War 2 guerrilla warfare. My wife suggested we make it “fun” – watch some Netflix, possibly have a middle-of-the-night love session. And all I can think about right now is holy shit; three more nights of this! Plus the possibility of bringing another one of these creatures into the world.
I sneak in two earplugs into my ears and throw my pillow over my head to drown out the sound. Ten minutes are up. My wife taps me on the shoulder and insists I visit the nursery for a brief soothing session. In my head, I contemplate whether it’s a nursery or a torture chamber.
I step into the baby’s room, ear plugs intact, give him a gentle kiss on his forehead, hand him his Elmo and cover him with his blanket. I tiptoe gracefully out of the room like some Juilliard performance.
As I step through the door frame, my son clocks me in the back of the head with a teether. I fall to the ground. I attempt to cry out to my wife for help. But it occurs to me that either way I die here. Either of internal bleeding from having a sharp object thrown at my head or my wife killing me for waking up the baby.
I succumb; at least now I’ll finally get some sleep.
David Nurieli