G is a very different baby than E was. Two years in, we feel like we understand our toddler pretty well. We know how to comfort him, how to put him back to sleep if he wakes up, what makes him happy and what doesn’t. And it’s lead us to a false sense of confidence that we know babies/children in general.
But G is a very different baby.
He wants different things, and somehow we’re still trying to figure out what they are. We have no idea how to comfort him, mostly because it seems like he often doesn’t want to be comforted. He won’t cuddle in our arms, he doesn’t like hugs, and we don’t get a cute head resting on our shoulders. Instead we get a baby flailing around and trying to look over our shoulders to see what he’s missing out on.
When he wakes up crying, we don’t really know what to do either. With E we used to go in and rub his back or pick him up and give him a few hugs before putting him back to bed. If we do that for baby G, he just cries harder. No amount of hugs, pats or cuddles will calm him down.
There seems to only be two options we’ve discovered so far. One is to let him settle himself. This is what we usually do. We’ll watch him on the baby monitor and give him five minutes or so, and usually *fingers crossed* he goes back to bed. But every once in a while we doubt ourselves and decide that maybe he needs us. Maybe he’s been crying for too long. Maybe he really needs a cuddle.
And so we go in his room. And pick him up. And he screams at us even louder. The only thing to do at this point is to bring him downstairs/in our bedroom/wherever the people are. That’s what he really wants. To hang out and get extra attention. And sometimes we’ll let him for a bit. Except here’s the thing - we know he’s tired. We know he needs sleep. And so we try to put him back to bed. Usually it works, after he’s had a bit of hang out time.
The other night, though? He wasn’t buying it. Nothing we could do could get him back to sleep. He screamed bloody murder if we even brought him near his room. He screamed so loud he woke his brother up (that was fun). He wasn’t hungry. He had a new diaper. He wasn’t sick (although we gave him Motrin just in case since we were willing to try anything). He was happy as a clam if we brought him downstairs or into a room with a light on.
But if we tried to rock him, cuddle him, bring him in a dark room? Immediate screams. Screams that were so bad I was sure he was going to lose his voice. And then he’d start coughing like he was going to throw up. He had himself SO worked up. And it was three hours past bedtime, but this kid would not go to bed. We tried EVERYTHING.
Tom eventually sent me to bed and just walked him around downstairs until he almost passed out. At which point he put him in his crib and G rolled over and went to bed. And I can’t tell you why. We’d tried it ten times over the previous hours. This baby has me mega confused.
I also can’t say that he hates sleep, because most nights (seriously almost every night), he sleeps 12 hours straight. It’s just every once in a while he becomes this night monster. I really wish he’d just cuddle with us and let us rock him to sleep, but he wants to be his own person.
