The harsh reality for Adlai is that the boob feeds are on their way out. It’s a bitter pill to swallow (not literally), that soon all his milk will come from a cow.
Over the past few weeks Adlai has been getting into the habit of waking up in the night. ‘We’ve’ been using the boob to get the boy back to sleep. It’s quick and effective – exactly what you want in the middle of the night. But these feeds must stop, and this weekend it has fallen to me to take our nights back. Faith can’t go in there because he’ll smell the milk and it will turn into an absolute fiasco.
The idea is that the Adlai only cries when he wakes up in the night because he knows it will result in a few minutes of breastfeeding.
When he realises that all he is getting is boring old Dad coming in and patting his butt for a while, he’ll figure out that waking up and crying is more trouble than it’s worth thus resulting in everybody getting a solid night’s sleep and a happy household.
Adlai is fighting for his boob in the night. We are only two nights in and it’s harder than I’d imagined. Last night I was up between the hours of 4am and 6am. The night before I don’t even know if slept. Faith reassures me that Adlai will adapt quickly and all will be well again. I hope she’s right.
The moment of most tension in the night is when, after two hours of crying, my son is finally silent. Last night this happened when Faith was in the toilet. Her walk back from the toilet meant that she would need to negotiate our creaky floorboards, past Adlai’s room and back to the safety of our bed. As I saw her down the hall I signalled that Adlai was quiet and hopefully asleep… it wasn’t the sort of thing she would fail to notice, as after all the crying the silence was deafening. She moved down the hall like a ballerina in super slow motion. All I could do was pray and shine the light of my mobile phone to guide her home. The odd creak was unavoidable, but nothing sparked more than a half-hearted whimper from Adlai. Thankfully this was not Faith’s first rodeo and she knew exactly where to step. She made it.
Adlai slept for the rest of the night. This battle for the boob was won, but the war is far from over…
