Rough Night

It was a tough night last night. Shaan woke up 4 separate times. We put him to bed at about 10:00 p.m.

**Family history tangent: Shaan has been great about his sleep patterns. If he is put to bed anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30, he will wake up only once in the middle of the night around 3:00 and then wake up again, when its time for my wife and I to start getting ready for work around 6:30. .

Let me back up here for a moment. Before going to sleep my young son was a little hungrier than usual, so after his main course, consisting of breast milk, with a side of breast milk, we decided that for dessert we would give him some formula, which might also aid in helping him sleep longer. For those of you unfamiliar with the eating habits of young homo sapiens, although breast milk is the most nutritious for babies, feeding between the ages of 0-4 months occur every 2-4 hours. Children who are given formula supplement, tend to stay satiated for a longer period of time. This is often why, when combing breast milk and formula, the formula is given at night, to help the baby and parents sleep longer. But I digress. So we gave Shaan some formula before bed.

So to further set up my crappy evening, Shaan has once again gone about 3 days without pooping. He averages once every three days.

So, Shaan is put down around 10:00p.m. or so. I am woken by my wife, saying something that sounds like gibberish, because, I was in a pretty deep sleep, around 12:30. All I heard was, feeding, poop, get up, now and hurry up. Creating a sentence in my head using the words I managed to decipher, I determined that getting up would be a good idea and the sooner the better. I grabbed Shaan and took him to nursery to change him. And this is where I encountered the three days worth of poop waiting for me in the diaper and all around my son's ass. Lovely. Usually breast milk poops don't smell. When they are three day combined poops they do. Also, formula poops reek as well. It was no doubt pungent and definitely stung the nostrils. Quite the formidable scent. (Bonus points for knowing the movie reference).

I was next woken up at about 4:00 a.m. After a normal feeding, I am in charge of holding Shaan up, so that he doesn't spit up all over himself. I did this without a problem. I usually hold him upright for about 20 minutes. Now my normal modus operandi for this to take him from my wife and head down stairs and watch TV. I tried hanging out in the nursery on the rocker, but at 4 a.m., when you are dead tired, watching the minutes slowly go by is pure hell. So I have started going downstairs and watching TV. Now because I watch a lot of Comedy Central and I will end the night with the Daily Show or Colbert Report, it is usually the last channel on. Comedy Central stops running its programming at about 3 a.m. This is promptly replaced by an infomercial for Girls Gone Wild videotapes. So inevitably it is the first thing that comes up. Therefore the first thing I am struck with at 4:00 a.m. with my two month old, sleeping on my chest, is college girls flashing a camera, with a strategically placed star which reads, "order now" or "uncensored" or "we checked, they are at least 18." Now any hetero guy, probably, anybody actually, that turns this on, will watch for a while. So I do. But after seeing the same add over and over again (the latest shtick for the GGW series is to incorporate some of the douchebags from the MTV Real World series to videotape the women - this is what those in the advertising industry call synergy. Now I am not one to judge what does it sexually for somebody else, but can someone explain to me how the image of Cyrus from the Real World coaxing drunk girls to flash makes for a more erotic experience, well more so than any random douchebag getting a girl to flash), it grows tiresome. Because you think to yourself, just once, they are going to forget to put the "order now" sign up and one might just get a glimpse of forbidden nipple. But it doesn't happen. So inevitably I change it to ESPN news. This is when I learned my beloved Dodgers lost to the dreaded Giants (Bonds is on 'roids, accept it. If not, please explain why his head is twice the size it used to be. What equipment does one use at the gym to expand your skull?)

The third time I was woken up by Shaan crying at 5:30. He just needed to be held for a while. The formula wasn't agreeing with him. I was up for about 10 minutes.

The last time I was woken up was at 6:15. He had trouble sleeping all night. He was more comfortable sleeping on my chest. I took him back to bed and let him lay on my chest. It was ten minutes before I fell asleep with him there. I woke up at 7:15 to get ready for work, with him unmoved on my chest, not realizing he was there. Kind of scary.

Needless to say, I am bit tired today. My wife has had it more rough than me as of late. Breast milk only tonight.