Baby Daddy 37: We Broke Our Son...Maybe....?

That's right, I said it. We broke our son. We went to war, and he won the battle. With that said, we may have won the war. For those who don't know, our son is five months old. As it turns out, this is a special time in his life, where he starts sleeping like a real person. What does that mean? It means that it takes a fuck-tonne longer to get him to sleep, and he is fast and easy to wake. How do we know? Because that motherfucker woke up four times in the night, for the past week.

Now I know what you may be thinking. That's a lie, I don't know and I don't give two shits. I'd give one, but that's reserved for someone. You know who you are (*Insert winky face*). And so, after a week of non-sleep, we chose to introduce our son to the new sleeping arrangement. What is that arrangement? Well he was going to learn to sleep in a crib, in another room, and without a pacifier. Why? Because I am sick and tired of washing his goddamn pacifier all the time. 

Why am I always washing it? Because he fucking throws that binky on the floor in protest. Seriously. He was fussing up a storm one day, so I gave him a pacifier. That child looks at me, dead in the eye, grabs his pacifier, and fucking drops it. It landed straight on the floor and rolled under the couch. Do you know how gross that is? Nobody vacuums under their couch. That is known as the dead-zone. That is the area that you never look under, you never reach under, and you never acknowledge as existing. I once dropped a $20 bill, and it landed under the couch. Do you know what happened? 

The funny answer would be to say that I left that sumbitch there, until I eventually moved. That made for a great moving day, because I made $20. The real answer is that I retrieved it, and immediately wished that I could cut of my arm and soak it in bleach. I did not do this, of course. Last thing I need is to make my pasty-white self any whiter. Instead, I washed my hands and went to Taco Bell. Yes, I was drunk at the time. Fuck you, you don't know my life. 

But as I was saying, our son was growing defiant, and was needing a new sleep routine. So last night, we went for it. As it turns out, the method we used is called the Ferber technique. What we did is we got him ready for bed, and as he fell asleep, my wife put him in the crib. We then began an hour of attrition. For five minutes, we would let our son cry and scream. We would then spend two minutes trying to comfort him. After that two minutes, we would go five minutes with letting him cry and scream, followed by two minutes of comfort. We did this for thirty minutes, and then extended the crying time to ten minutes, and then fifteen minutes. This went for an hour, and we likely going to go for more.

Now I will tell you, he won the battle. He never stopped crying, and my wife eventually caved in. She started crying and held him tight. My son was crying. My wife was crying. I was downstairs eating my dinner. But guess what? After my wife called him down, my son fell asleep in his crib, without a pacifier, and slept for at least eight (EIGHT!!!) hours! 

Since this time, he has consistently slept 7 hours. Unfortunately that starts around 8-8:30 PM, and thus means that we wake up at 3-3:30 AM.

Moral of the Story: We are still fighting over sleep, but the war is shifting in our favor.