Modest Goddess

I’m feeling a little undone lately. The baby is now in the habit of waking up twice a night; once around 1 a.m., when I’m awake anyway, and again at 4-ish, when I really, really want to be asleep. Back in the old days, parents were told that babies wanted to manipulate them, and they should resist any over-coddling such as picking them up when they were upset or feeding them when they were hungry. Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond that. (At least most of us have; I saw a little boy in a stroller today who was crying, but whose father did not remove him from his stroller, and to me, it was perfectly clear that the kid just wanted to be picked up and held and I really had to resist just going over and doing it myself.)

However, Mommy can’t indefinitely subsume herself to Baby, and so I’m hoping some kind of middle ground will soon make itself apparent, where Baby realizes that Mommy can’t jump out of bed every morning because he’s feeling a little teething pain, and Daddy doesn’t mind getting up at 4 a.m. himself for a few nights.