I cracked a bit last night. Usually, in the middle of the night I am pretty calm and even find myself falling asleep faster than Finn. But last night was different for seemingly no reason at all.
He had flooded the bed behind him, a not-so-unusual occurrence, and need a full clothes change along with a bottle at 3am. The changing went okay, but with his new-found love for flopping around like a new trout, it gets old fast. I always pre-warm the bottle in the tiny window between pulling him out of bed and changing his diaper so my nice warm bottle was ready to go. We sit down and I start feeding him, that goes just fine – the usual cat stepping on him, another one howling about how I am ignoring her – nothing different, but for some reason this anger is welling up inside me. It’s not pointed at anything or anyone – just angry. My attempts to push it down and focus on getting Finn to, now, burp goes well. Then comes the post-bottle battle.
Like I said before he’s found a likeness toward floundering around when things are just so. This also wakes him up, a lot. You’ve got to move from bottle to pacifier very quickly after burping – I guess I didn’t move quite quick enough because his milk induced lull was dropped for a woken baby stare. The rage bubbled. I gripped Finn tight against my chest and took a handful of deep breaths for his sake and mine. He quickly fell back to dreamland and I began the move to his bed. The Sandman stuck with him till my arm was pulled from behind his head – and he popped awake like he had just been playing me for a fool. The anger welled. Resilient, I wrapped him up and moved forward popping the plug in and leant down to silence the howling cat. Then the plastic clink, that only noise that can come from your son pushing out his pacifier. The mania was dragging me deeper. I took a hard deep breath as I pulled Finn out of his bed and squatted on the Astroturf rug and rocked and rocked for hope – for hope of him finally letting go and finishing the rest of the night in dreamland. After ten minutes of rolling and rocking while itchy turf pushed its way thorough my boxers he had fallen asleep enough for me to try again. All wrapped up, fed, dry, clean – I set him down ever so slowly back into his crib. Finn’s head snapped forward as it grazed the cool bed sheet.
“You Jackass. Go. To. Sleep.”
And I didn’t mean it in the joking – oh you are being a jerk. Oh no. Somewhere in my dumb brain, I knew – just knew – he was doing this on purpose. I pulled back the loose side of the blanket and pulled the fleece as tight as it would go across his tiny body – trapping his flopping arm against his side and making him nearly immobile save for his neck – and stuck the plug in and stood back.
Almost as soon as I took my step back I regretted being angry – being that he is the baby not me. His eyes drooped right away like the taunt wrap was the one thing holding him back from deep sleep. I huffed and walked out of the room feeling defeated and guilty.
I said I was sorry for being angry this morning – he seemed unfazed.