Little Badger Crying

It’s nearly 10 PM and Henry, my little badger, is crying. Lest you think that I’m the worst mother in the world – blogging while my child is screaming - it’s my husband’s night to care for him. Even so, I’ve already been up to offer my assistance in his plight. My efforts were fruitless and by the crying that is still carrying on upstairs, Andy is not having any luck either.

Henry just turned 7 months. Andy is convinced that we have “spared the rod, spoiled the child” so to speak by allowing Henry to fall asleep with a bottle since his existence outside the womb. About a month ago Henry, previously being a 6:30 PM to 6 AM solid sleeper, started waking up at various inconvenient hours of the evening. It was pretty much a crap shoot when he’d wake. If you were lucky, he’d wake up before we went to bed at 11 PM. If we weren’t, 2 AM would make an appearance…and again at 4 AM. As Andy states, we spoilt him by giving him milk at these ungodly baby hours to allow him to go back to sleep. Andy has thrown down the Father Gauntlet and insists that we now must break Henry of this habit.

Thus, Henry is crying.

Henry has actually been crying for a solid hour straight now. Because I fall in the camp of “I’ll do anything to make you silent (within reason)”, my body is twitching to fetch that bottle and make that horrible noise of my dear sweet boy crying his eyes out go away. Andy is right of course, we do need to break the habit. Henry does need to sleep through the night without us running for that carton of milk (due to our tiredness, I’m surprised we haven’t accidentally poured Diet Coke in one of his bottles yet) (or vodka). I’m just not convinced that now is the right time. He’s 7 months old. He’s teething. He’s days away from crawling. He’s only a week into a schedule of 3 solid feeds a day. Henry’s poor little brain is swirling all over the shop and now his parents, who are suppose to love him, are denying him milk at night when that is all he needs to get to sleep. I’m sure if he could walk already, he’d pack up a little handkerchief tied around a stick and run away.

On a side note, I’d be very curious what his 7 month old mind would put in that handkerchief. Milk obviously. Maybe a couple of his favorite toys. I’m sure there would be an effort to shove the cat in there – which would be a huge mistake as the cat would just bite him then run off to tell us about the Great Escape.

Andy just came down. Henry is still crying but Andy is at his breaking point.

“You do think we’re doing the right thing, don’t you?”

“Well…”

“He’s got to learn not to want milk any time he wants to go to sleep. I’m not having him be 18 years old and waking us at 2 AM because he wants a sandwich.”

I told Andy my reasoning (funny that I just wrote my reasoning a couple paragraphs ago…it’s like having a prepared speech for life…how often does that happen?) and we tried to discuss it further with the child screaming in the background.

You know what?

I won.

Now there is sweet silence as the boy is slowing dozing off while sucking on a Dr. Brown’s Level 2 teat.

Hee. Everyone loves winning a battle.

Still…I feel I’ve lost the war.