Jellybean Strikes Back

Not surprisingly, Jenny does NOT like liver. See hilarious video in sidebar. Please do not call Social Services.

Once again, I had a great post written at 1:45 am, in my head, and if you think I can remember even part of it you are completely wrong. I need to start keeping some sort of recording device by my bedside, like a very important author supposedly does, so I can mumble all my incoherent thoughts into it while listening to Jelly scream with outrage at being Ferberized. I've been trying to get her to soothe herself back to sleep the past few nights, inconsistently, and YES I KNOW I NEED TO BE CONSISTENT, I'VE GIVEN 8 MILLION OTHER PARENTS THAT ADVICE, BUT I'M THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS NOW!!!! It's, uh, true what they say about how it's easy to say it and really, really hard to stick to it when it's an ungodly hour and the baby is now hoarse and for the sweet love of baby Jesus all you want to do is be unconscious in your warm bed because you have so much freaking work to do tomorrow. So I knew at 12:30 am that, even though it was going to be a few long and tortuous hours, I needed to either do it or give in and let her sleep with me, ensuring I would get NO sleep until she finally woke up and left for college.

The Ferber method is criticized by many as being cruel and damaging and all sorts of other things. I think it's nice that hippies I mean some other people can sleep with thrashing snorting coughing snoring little people in their beds, kicking them in the boobies and pulling their hair and putting uncut little fingernails in their noses. I can't. I'm a light sleeper as it is. So Jelly has to sleep in her own pretty little pink room, in her own lonely little bed. I'm a mean mother that way. I started 'sleep training' a few nights ago, half-heartedly. There were so many excuses - she's teething, she's had a cold since like October, she doesn't see me all day; but let me tell you, when you pick up a crying child and she INSTANTLY goes to sleep, but springs awake when you set her back down - you know you've got a problem. That, and she threw the most remarkable tantrum! I had picked her up after like the 20-minute wait part of the ride and then set her back down to change a wet diaper, and she kicked her little feet. Beat them, on the change table. And shook her arms angrily. And HOLLERED. I almost laughed. Precious little Baby Jenny wanted to be held and wanted it NOW. And really, the toughest part is, can you blame her? So there's mommy guilt of all kinds in there as well.

At some point during the two-hour battle of wills I thought about how glad I was that I didn't have a husband, especially my last serious boyfriend. Because he would have FOR SURE been able to sleep through the ear-piercing siren wails, and I would have punched him in the throat. See, for women, baby's cries (especially their own) are like little tiny knives that go through the ear drum and follow some magical path directly to the heart, where they proceed to slash little tiny tears. Men, on the other hand, tend to have some sort of trampoline device that rebounds the cries so they aren't as affected. Cries for them, if they get through, go directly to the Irritation Center, where the cries poke and pinch and continuously say, 'What are you doing? Why? When will we be there?' and things like that. With enough sleep deprivation, this happens to mothers as well, which can result in them standing at the crib glaring at their most precious loved one instead of laying on the floor praying for either sleep or death, whichever comes fastest.

In the grand scheme of things I know this should only last a few nights, and it's still nothing like what my sister N has to endure. If I really wanted, I could pick her up and rock her every single time, and she would go back to sleep, and would not require a nipple or finger or raw hot dog in her mouth. Just joking about the hot dog, N would never do that. SHE would be eating the raw hot dog.