The Monsters At Night

For selfish sleeping reasons, we have been trying to get Oliver's feedings down to a schedule at the end of the day. If we can get him to eat around 7:30, this will keep him on track for a feeding somewhere around 10:30, which works great because Michael can tolerate a 2-3am time frame for a feeding, and I do okay around 6am.

But lately, he has been eating as if he were training at Winter Park with #4 at the rest of the Vikings. Oh sure, he may eat at 7:30, but may need another bottle at 8:30, followed by another one at 9. I watched a show on The Learning Chanel yesterday about the world's tallest children. I can't help myself. I am morally opposed to watching these kinds of shows that target gawking audiences. But the remote finds its way to "Big World, Little People," "18 Kids and Counting," "World's Tallest Children," and I settle into the sofa to gawk. This may explain why I keep telling people that I'm worried that Oliver is aiming to be a cable special: "The Baby Who Wouldn't Stop Eating."

Anyway...due to abnormally excessive bottling, he gets a little off from time to time for our evening goals. The other night, he ate somewhere around 9:30, and we put him to bed in the dark at 10:30. Which means that he woke up at midnight, and consequently, then needed a feeding at 4:45 am.

4:45. Right in between the times where Michael and I are most functional. As in, so neither of us are functional. I hit Michael on the arm and whispered in the dark over Oliver's fidgeting.

"Hey. Do you need me to do the feeding?"

"Do I need you to do the feeding? I don't need you to do it," he said groggily.

Uh-oh. Here we go. I knew better. One of the things we learned within a few weeks of becoming parents was that we should not be negotiating or making any decisions in the middle of the night. When Oliver woke up hungry, we had the same pattern: whoever was more awake would sit up and eventually saunter into the bathroom to get the bottle ready. Whoever was least awake- or to be really honest, whoever could hold out the longest pretending to have slept through the cries- either fell back asleep, or stayed awake with a tinge of guilt.

Whenever Michael got up for a feeding I would say, "Do you want me to do it? I can do it if you want me to. Do you? Or are you okay?" This drove him crazy. Of course he wanted me to do the feeding. Did he need me to do the feeding? No. Did either of us want to get up and do it? Of course not. Under sleep deprivation, we turned into people that we didn't recognize. Monsters. Taking turns being the nicer half of the married couple, or at least the martyr: "Here, let me do it, you're the one that really needs the sleep..." Or even worse, a challenging silence after help has been offered. It took us a while to learn that we should be figuring these things out in the daylight when we've had a couple hours of sleep under our belts. After talking during the day about nightly routines, we discovered that, as previously mentioned, Michael is most awake to do the first feeding of the evening, and I am better off for the second.

One night, not too long ago, it was midnight before I got Oliver to bed. His times got off again and I offered to stay up (watching more gawker-trash on TLC) until he ate at 11. He didn't take his typical amount, and fell asleep early on. 15 minutes after laying him down, he woke up ready for more. I was sitting outside our room, reading, just in case this happened. I walked in to finish the feeding, and found Michael sitting at the edge of the bed, squinting, waking himself up to begin a feeding.

He hadn't looked at the clock. For a short and very evil second, I thought of letting him do it. It would be like watching him get ready for work on a Saturday, or waking up an hour too early for church on Daylight Savings. This wasn't his feeding. Guilt got the better of me and my monstrous claws retracted, as I swept through the door to take Oliver out for his feeding. "Go back to bed honey," I said, voice dripping with sweetness. "I'll take this one tonight."

At 5:45 this morning, Oliver began to fidget. "Guess what," Michael said in a hush. "Our boy slept through the night."

And so he had. But instead of relief, I answered in annoyance: "Well, that's not fair," I groaned. "What do you mean?" he asked, confused. I answered: "It was your feeding that he slept through."

To which Michael responded by getting up to make the bottle. Good man.