“He looks like I do first thing in the morning.”

When I get up in the morning, Chris then rolls over into my spot and proceeds to wiggle about until he has taken up the entire bed, and limbs and blankets are every-which-way.

Gabe’s sleeping patterns have been changing too frequently lately for us to get a handle on. Tonight I couldn’t nurse him to sleep, couldn’t rock him to sleep, couldn’t sing him to sleep; and when I put him in his crib he went straight to enraged. Desperate, I called in Chris, and retreated to the shower.

Just as I was (reluctantly) turning off the water, Chris came in with the monitor – which was relaying angry wails. Chris wanted to give Gabe some time to cry it out. Okay, I said, let’s try it for five minutes and see how it goes.

I envisioned the screams increasing in intensity to boiling kettle heights. And then I envisioned the screams just going and going and going at their current level. And then. . . I realized he had paused. . . and resumed with less intensity. And paused again. And resumed, sounding sleepy. And paused. . .

He didn’t even sound pitiful, which was something else I had feared about the cry-to-sleep method. He sounded . . .humorous. Gabe was fighting sleep, and losing, and nothing else. As we listened to his last sleepy protests, Chris and I were actively laughing. It took less than five minutes before Gabe was silent – and a nice comfortable silence, at that.

Chris, being the good Daddy that he is, had to go in to make sure that the baby wasn’t dead. And he came back to report that “he looks like I do first thing in the morning.”