I threw a pacifier

I'm trying to do my best to keep this blog real as I document my experiences as a new mom. Lately, I've had a lot of rainbows and sunshine, so its only fair to give you a little bit of gray to even it all out. I have to confess. I threw a pacifier. And it felt good.

How did it come to this? Well. Baby B decided that when I went back to work, he would no longer sleep through the night. His decision happened to coincide with me coming down with the crud that's been going around, placing me at an immediate disadvantage for battling a round of sleep wars, 2013.

Sunday night was a bad night. We put Baby B to bed and he fell asleep almost immediately, with his pacifier in his mouth. Then he spit it out. Then he screamed. Then we put it back in. Then we held it there. Then this process repeated for about 45 minutes, interrupting our nightly episode of Downton Abbey.

I'm not sure how this process even started because we know better. He has never been able to keep a pacifier in his mouth. He spits it out, it falls out or he loses interest. We usually only use a pacifier to calm him down before a nap, when we're awake and can hold it there until he falls asleep. For some reason, knowing his track record, we decided that we should try to use the pacifier at bed time. Dumb move. Don't get me wrong, the pacifier would work to get him to fall asleep, but the problem was that when it fell out, we were turning into trained monkeys, running upstairs to stick it back in. I'm not gonna lie - methods to secure the pacifier to his face have crossed my mind, but because tape or elastic around his head and on his face would be considered child abuse, I quickly scrapped that idea.

Anyway, this routine continued on and off through the night - with everyone getting about an hour and a half to two hours of sleep at a time, which doesn't work for anyone - especially a baby who is growing so fast. So. 5:30am came around and Baby B woke up screaming. This time, it was legit screaming for food, but I was so tired and cranky that the thought didn't cross my mind. My dumb ass self tried to comfort a hungry baby and couldn't figure out why he wouldn't settle down (because he was hungry, duh). In the midst of him screaming, me bouncing and swaying and him growing more and more hysterical...I whipped the pacifier across the room. I heard it hit the crib and felt better...and worse at the same time. I think that snapped be back to reality and I used what God gave me to settle that baby down. Yay for boobs.

Moral of the story. As much as my days are filled with rainbows and sunshine, the also come with the occasional thunderstorm (or tornado), and that's ok. I admit that I threw a pacifier and momentarily lost my shit. I was so livid, that once I calmed down, Nick welcomed me back. When I became rational again, I realized that the trained monkey routine was not working for anyone. I asked a friend for advice and we have come up with a better and more productive sleep routine for everyone in the house. How did we do it? Post coming soon.

I have to admit, hearing other moms' stories of babies who refuse to sleep and who inexplicably go ape shit bananas makes me feel better. It seems that the normal is that nothing is normal. Have you ever lost it? What's your version of throwing a pacifier? I'd love to hear about it.