The Midnight Meltdown

In general, our daughter Rachel is an amiable, cute as can be, well behaved little girl. Until it is time for us to go to bed, that is. The change in her sleep schedule has roughly corresponded with my going back to work and she seems to have an uncanny sense for adjusting her volume according to how tired her parents happen to be at the time. A more polite child would tone it down a bit when her mommy and daddy kiss her goodnight and turn off the light. Not our Rachel though. She will not immediately launch into a full blown tirade. Usually she will wait about ten minutes or so, so she can be most likely to catch us when we are drifting off to sleep. I see this as quite ingenious on her part as this tactic increases the shock value of the first scream ten fold. We have learned quickly that the first scream will never be an isolated incident either. At this time of day we can count on it quickly snowballing into a unholy and demonic tirade.

Bree has bourne the lions share of the burden of trying to get Rachel to sleep during these epic nocturnal outbursts. For that I am extremely grateful. Her bossum often seems to provide the only solution on most of these occasions. The problem, however, is that even the bossum itself is rarely a quick fix. Feeding takes time, and even when Rachel drifts off to sleep and she goes back into her crib, as soon as she realizes it is dark and that nobody is holding her, she inevitably restarts the process.

We have worried that our little girl will be one of those babies that you can't put down because they always want to be held. So we consider whether or not to try to break her of this early on by putting her down in the bouncer or putting her to bed when she is sleeping or is very calm. The thinking being that this will make her more accustomed to being in a position where we are not cradling her. But then, we think that hey, this baby isn't even two weeks old yet! Why shouldn't we be holding her all the time? Babies like to be held. After all, they've spent most of their time, thus far, snugly tucked away in a nice, warm uterus. So it should be only natural that they would want to held all the time. But how much holding is too much? I guess this is just one of the many questions that we will struggle with over the years that will someday seem inconsequential. For now, we just want to do the right thing were we can strike that happy balance between her needs and ours.

As with this morning, when the alarm clock goes off at 6:30 after being awake most of the night, I'm sure it is only natural for me to want Rachel to be able to lay happily and quietly in her crib regardless of whether or not she's sleeping. I know that that is not realistic, and I don't hold it against Rachel. In fact, this evening, she has been more angelic than she has ever been since she was born. We gave her a bath and slicked down her natural mohawk. Best of all she smiled at her daddy. That smile has a way of making everything else that happened the night before ok. If she doesn't hold a grudge, I guess I won't either.

As an aside, after my alarm went off this morning, the radio was playing for a long time without my fully waking up. The DJs were discussing the recent news that Sarah Silverman and Jimmie Kimmel had broken up. When I finally woke up, I realized that I had incorporated this discussion into my dream. I dreamed that Jimmie and I were buddies and that I had to go talk to him about what had happened between him and Sarah. In real life, I really don't care, but I awakened very concerned for him.