4:27 AM
All is quiet; the world sleeps.
4:28 AM
My wife jolts me awake; our son has managed to wet through EVERYTHING — onesie, PJs, sheet, mattress pad. I jump up and head over to help her. She extracts him, still sleeping yet moaning, from the crib and I start tossing out blankets, glow seahorse (“Fin”), pillows, etc.
4:30 AM
Landa is knee-deep in stripping off our child while I’m ankle-deep in stripping off the mattress, each of us tossing wet fabric into the wash pile.
4:32 AM
She re-assembles Keston into warm, dry diaper, onesie, and PJs as I put the finishing touches on the new mattress covering, lie it back down, and re-arrange the crib bumper.
4:33 AM
I help finish off the last of dressing my son, who is still asleep but awake enough to suck on a bottle while we toss limbs into holes in clothing and zip it up. He desperately wants to go back to sleep, thankfully.
4:34 AM
We lay the little boy back down in the now-dry crib and tuck him in with copious, fuzzy blankets and Fin playing soft lullabies. A few rhythmic pats on the back and his whining reduces to moaning and sucking on his bottle with a few sighs of happiness tossed in.
4:35 AM
I drop back into bed, pull up the covers, and just before my consciousness blinks out into oblivion, I think: “Damn — we’re getting good at this.”
Im impressed
Just don’t do what I did once. Needed to change the sheets and couldn’t command myself to grow an extra arm. I put a boy down on the floor who was crawling and learning to walk. I then flipped on the lights. Big mistake.
He didn’t know it wasn’t morning. It was time to get up for him. He went at a full-tilt crawl toward the door and out into the hallway. Wes just knew it was awesome that Daddy was awake and obviously it was time to play. Two hours (one feed/play/naptime cycle) later, he was groggy again and put back into bed.
I now go stand in a darkened bathroom with the door closed when the linens need changing–I let Katie handle the sheets. Two hours of sleep is worth it.
You are an incredibly lucky man! If Nick wakes up for any reason in the night, he’s done for the night. There’s no putting that boy back to sleep again…
Sometimes it’s a few hours before he goes back to sleep, but on occasion (and good coordination) we get lucky. Of course, he’s NEVER made it all the way through a night without getting up at least once, so you’re ahead of us on that note.
Well, the secret to your success is ‘working together’. We should all take notes, especially some other husbands I know
Patricias last blog post..Hunger and World Poverty