Clash of the Titans

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!

I'm sure that is what my neighbors thought happened this morning, based on the amount of noise that was being generated.  Or at least that's how it felt to me.

Then again it was before 5AM, and I had an infant screaming about 2 inches from my ear.  When your eardrum is literally vibrating it is a little hard to keep things in perspective.

Why, you may ask, was Ryan so mad?  What could cause such an adorable infant to become 19 pounds of seething rage?

His mother, who decided that at 9½ months old he should be able to sleep through the night.  For a while this wasn't an issue.  I would nurse Ryan right before going to bed (around midnight) and he would slumber peacefully until morning, then wake up happily and play with his toes until someone else woke up.  Then he would smile at me, and I'd pick him up and bring him downstairs.

Somewhere along the way this lovely morning routine died and my dimpled darling was replaced by a changeling child.  Ryan decided that he was starving in the middle of the night, and demanded to be nursed, sometimes more than once.  At first I gave in, thinking that he must be hungry.  Or that he was growing and needed some extra nutrition.  In retrospect this was a spectacularly bad decision and I am now paying for it.

Now instead of the happy morning that we were all having, I have a different routine.  Ryan wakes in the middle of the night crying, won't go back to sleep until he is fed and held.  Don't even think about putting him back in the crib - he also needs to be held for the rest of the night.  And when he wakes in the morning he's crabby and demanding (although once we're downstairs he does typically play happily and independently).

Over the past couple of weeks when everyone was sick I just gave up and gave in.  I fed Ryan on demand, in part to soothe him since he was clearly miserable, and in part because I wanted to make sure he was as hydrated as possible.  This resulted in me getting an average of 2-3 hours of sleep each night, for more than a week.  Not surprisingly I ended up sick and am now on antibiotics and have a horrible hacking cough that I can't shake.  I finally decided that enough was enough.

Ryan needs to start sleeping through the night.  Period.

To this effect I fed him, as usual, just before I went to bed (around midnight).  When he woke around 4AM I held him, but did not feed him.  And that's when things started to get ugly.  He tried crying a little, but it didn't work.  Then he tried crying some more - I held tough.  Ryan the progressed to an ear-shattering cry, complete with tears, but I still stayed strong.  I tried to soothe him, and he angrily batted my hand away (no kidding!) so I let him sit there and cry, thinking he would surely calm down soon.   Wrong!

I tried passing him to his father.  Hari was laying in bed with the little guy sitting on his stomach, still howling.  I continued to ignore the din as best I could, until Hari (during a miniature break in the noise, as Ryan tried to catch his breath) said "Look at him!"  I looked over, and realized that Ryan wasn't just crying.  He was looking directly at me, and then making his awful noise.  He was directing his full fury at me, just in case I wasn't aware that I was the sole cause of his utter misery.

Dad eventually passed the bawling boy back to me, but when my efforts to console him continued to fail I gave up and put him in his crib.  I figured if he was going to scream and sob when I'm holding him, he might as well do it in his crib.  I then put a pillow over my head and fell back asleep.

At some point Hari must have taken mercy on the little guy and picked him up, because when I woke up this morning the two of them were snuggled together, sleeping peacefully in Colin's bed (Colin was, of course, in the master bedroom with me).  And while it may take a few more nights of screaming (and a few games of musical-bed) I am committed to make this work.  I want my darling baby back... the one who sleeps through the night and wakes up happy in his own crib, and who lets his poor mother get a little rest.

But until then... RELEASE THE KRAKEN!