All Things Haley: Lesson #9 Short Fuse (updated with photos)

Lesson 9: Walk away.

Motherhood uncovers an enormous amount of patience that I never thought I could demonstrate. I don't know how I do it sometimes, but I can hold a screaming baby for a lot longer than I once though possible, and I can kiss his or her head over and over no matter how many times he or she swats at my face or claws at my neck in a meltdown-flailing-furry.

With that said, there comes a point when one must walk away. Put the baby down and take a hot second to collect, recover, breathe/cry/scream/askGodwhyohwhyisthisstillhappening?!?!?!?!? Tonight had more than one of those moments.

The babies had, what I thought was, a pretty good day. They didn't have stellar naps, but it wasn't anything horrible. At 2:30 I decided we needed to get out of the house during their nap time so I could get a run in. I put them in the stroller hoping for a nap-inducing jog. Caleb started out good, Grace needed her binky. By about three feet out the door, Caleb was fussing. He has an intense sensitivity to sunlight and FREAKS OUT whenever sun hits his face (I call this being a wuss...but I guess that's "wrong" when you're talking about a baby...). I force him to get a little sun from time to time, but I really needed them to nap so I repositioned him and the canopy every time we turned so the sun wouldn't hit him much (oy). He eventually fell asleep when we were in a shady stretch, and then about 15 minutes later, when I was (luckily) just around the corner from the house, he woke up in a full-blown panic. Flailing ensued, screaming, kicking, the whole thing. I thought that he might have been choking it was so bad. So I stopped immediately, went around to the front to check on him, he couldn't stop screaming. So I took him out of the stroller and held him, which made him stop crying. What? What WAS that? So I ended up having to push the stroller with sleeping Grace the rest of the way home with one hand so I could hold him with the other arm/my chin. It was a mess. I was frustrated, but I love my boy and if he needed to be held, I'd hold him.

Fast forward to 5:30pm. He obviously didn't get a great nap in before the 4:30 feed, and I wanted to try to do what we did yesterday with the no-nap before our "bedtime" feed at 7:30. Not gonna happen with such a bad earlier nap. So I put him down for a quick catnap around 5:30. He fell asleep for a little bit, then woke up grouchy. He was doing his tired cry for a good 15 minutes until he finally held onto his binky and passed out. Twenty minutes later, woke up crying. Ben held him, but he didn't really calm down until I picked him up and rocked him for a bit. We ate dinner quickly and fed them early at 7:15. So I'm thinking we'll get some really good sleep from him cuz he was looking tired...but little man was overtired. We've done this dance before, so I figured we might have some crying later in the night. Nope, he started crying pretty much immediately after this bottle around 7:45, and didn't stop until 11:00. But this wasn't crying, this was screaming. This was loud, ear-piercing, "someone has stabbed me" screaming. I would say I should call the doctor, but this isn't too abnormal, it just lasted longer.

I was so frustrated and tired and just on-edge. I had to walk away twice, and luckily I have Ben to take over and he does such an awesome job. We literally had to walk around our house for three straight hours. The bjorn was involved, but didn't work. The noise machine was involved but didn't last. There was rocking, there was tv watching, there was swing usage that just made it so much louder. It actually kept Grace awake tonight.

I'm buying the baby einstein dvd's, I'm at my wits end...but I'm thinking they won't work any better than all of the other madness we've got going on over here. This isn't fussing, this is straight horrific screaming. He can't even open his eyes he's screaming so hard.

I feel awful that I had to walk away, I mean...poor baby. He's obviously not in a good place. I'm lost.

Ben is out there feeding him a second night time bottle. I fed him at 10:15 and he stopped screaming long enough to take 3/4 of a bottle with a serious fight. I mean, he eats it so he has to be somewhat hungry. But he squirms the whole time.

Ok, rant over. Thanks for listening. I'm spent.

And I just spent ten minutes trying to upload the friggin pictures I took today and it keeps freezing so I'm going to sleep. What I need is a drink, but sleep wins.