Tough Love

The Boy had a massive diaper blowout yesterday. It was the first major blowout I've encountered since we started the rice cereal. We're really getting into some new textures & smells. And from what I understand, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm embarrassed to admit I couldn't get through it without gagging (maybe dry-heaving would be more accurate) several times. Maybe I'll eventually get used to it. I think I'd be okay if it was diaper contained. But this one was well over halfway up his back. I actually didn't know what to do at first. I was just coming up with a plan on how to deal with it when, thankfully, The Wife swooped in to help. The hard part was figuring out how to get his shirt off without spreading poop everywhere.

Then there's the sleeping. He hasn't ever consistently slept through the night. He's done it a few times, just not consistently. I'm no comfort to him at bedtime and in fact he usually gets more upset if I try to calm him than if I just leave him by himself. So they wife pretty much always puts him to bed. We've tried "Good Night, Sleep Tight" and "Sleeping Through The Night" and both have had limited success. He's seemed more cranky than normal lately (teething, perhaps?) and The Wife was at her wit's end last night so we got to a point where we decided we needed to let him cry it out. So he cried for a few minutes and then slept all night. We knew that was too easy. He was a bit off schedule today, and ended up falling asleep while nursing. So he woke up a little later and we thought he might need a burp. We got a couple small burps out and put him back down. He cried for a few minutes and quit. He woke up a few minutes later, cried hard for about 10 minutes and quit. He woke up a few minutes later and cried really really hard for about 15 - 20 minutes and quit. I'm sitting here now and he seems to be asleep, but he's rustling now and then. So I don't know what the night holds for us. It doesn't seem right to just let him cry, but we did check on him once or twice just to make sure he wasn't stuck or something. It's hard to do, and in fact, The Wife gets to a point where she can't listen. We know he's capable of doing it and it's just a matter of helping him learn how. None of the other options have worked, so I guess we'll try this. Sorry, buddy. We love you. We just don't know what else to try.

Luckily, I don't have enough readers to worry about too much hate mail.

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