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We started Operation Sleep Through the Night last night, and it was . . . well, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t what I would call a relaxing hot stone massage with an epidural chaser, but it definitely could have been worse. My plan was to go in and comfort if needed, but eliminate the bottle feedings completely. His reaction to the missing bottle was quite dramatic (oh, the arched back! The furious screaming! The attempts to squirm from my arms and plummet headfirst onto the wooden floors!) it actually sort of made the entire process a little bit easier, because I can deal with anger much better than sorrow. JB and I took turns and went in three times, doing our best to pat and soothe and rock him back to sleep, but really there wasn’t much we could do. He clearly wanted the bottle, and since we weren’t going to give it to him we were at a sort of Tarantino-esque standoff — guns pointed all around, tension crackling in the air — and so we mostly just put him back down and tiptoed from the room while he kicked the mattress and howled baby cuss words at us.

He loudly protested the situation from about 12:30 to 3 AM, and then slept soundly until 8. I have no idea what we’re in for tonight, but I hope we’re on the right track. I also took the advice some of you gave about putting him down a little earlier. It didn’t seem to make a difference in terms of when he first woke up, but maybe once we get into a better routine it will help.

Oh, and for anyone else dealing with this sort of situation in a house where you cannot escape the noise no matter what you do, may I recommend the “3D Ocean Environment” from Darwin Chamber? You can find it on iTunes, it’s basically 90 minutes of ocean waves going into and out of your ears in this trippy full-sound kind of way and I found it to be very soothing. Every now and then I’d hit the pause button to make sure the crying hadn’t escalated, but the rest of the time I was mostly listening to water and seagulls and the occasional boooooooop of a . . . I don’t know, a Relaxing Oceanic Horn Of Some Kind. Boat? Lighthouse? Something.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on with that. I’ll keep you posted on how it all plays out. The good news for me is that I’m leaving town again for a couple nights this weekend (for SXSW, any of you going?) so ideally by the time I get home on Sunday Dylan will have got the whole thing figured out and all of us will start getting eight uninterrupted hours of sleep each night. Also, there will be a pony waiting for me. A magical pony who shits gold ingots and enjoys vacuuming.

God. Eight. Hours. In a row. I hadn’t truly realized how much I want my sleep back until I started actively taking steps to make this situation better.

Dylan has never slept through the night, but for quite a while he was only waking up once and I found that to be totally survivable. Not pleasant, exactly, since having someone jolt me out of a drooling coma at 2 AM is never my idea of a good time, but it wasn’t garment-rendingly horrible either. I got so I was basically dealing with him on autopilot: at the first few cries my legs would swing out from under the covers on their own and I’d be down the hall with bottle in hand before my eyelids even cranked to half-mast.

In retrospect it seems this wasn’t maybe the best strategy in the entire world, if the goal was for everyone to eventually sleep through the night unaided. With the exception of a few horrible nights when I tried to let him cry it out but eventually caved, I’ve apparently been doing my level best to teach this child that room service is available 24/7, no matter how many times he presses the call button.

I thought the situation would get better over time, but it’s just gotten worse. He now wakes up an average of 2-3 times per night, and that difference seems to represent the proverbial straw on the camel’s back for me. It’s not just that it’s annoying, or tiring, the real problem now is that it’s making me angry and resentful. When he first starts complaining, I lie there for a few minutes just feeling this overwhelming sensation of GODDAMN IT TO HELL, KID, before trudging in his room and making irritable shh! shh! shh! sounds at him. Once I pick him up and we’re settled in the rocking chair, I find myself calming down almost immediately, and the ritual of rocking him back to sleep — his body burrowed against mine — is soothing and pleasurable and part of me really enjoys it. I just don’t enjoy it enough to do it at 11 PM, 2 AM, and 5 AM, you know?

I’m also having a really hard time waking up in the morning. JB usually gets up before I do and dresses the boys and starts Riley’s breakfast while I creak my way out of bed, and thank god for that, but even once I’m up and moving it’s a while before I feel ready to deal with two small loud-ass children, which is unfortunate, because THERE THEY ARE, and shockingly no one’s willing to leave me be for twenty minutes while I suck down half a pot of coffee. Now, to be sure, I’m not much of a morning person to begin with, but I have to assume that the interrupted sleep is no small contributor to the way I feel at the start of each day: cranky, headachy, and generally mentally impaired. I had quite enough of that during my drinking years, thank you very much.

So: sleep training. I hate having to do it — not because I think it’s cruel, but because I hate the feeling of lying there listening to the crying (there is no escaping it, by the way, sound travels at an alarmingly effective rate from one end of our house to the other and easily permeates earplugs and Unisom-dosings, both of which I have tried) and feeling something like a full-body heart attack in response and KNOWING that if I just got up and went in there I could be back in bed and sleeping in less than 15 minutes — but I don’t know what else to do. Dylan’s over a year old now and there seem to be no signs that he’s going to figure it out on his own.

Things we have tried:

• Different bedtimes (7:45-8 PM is his usual bedtime, at least before the beshitted DST, and it doesn’t help to push it back later.)
• Feeding him as much as possible before bed. Makes no difference.
• Adjusting his temperature (using warmer/cooler bedclothes). Makes no difference.
• Benadryl. Shut up. Also, doesn’t really help — he maybe goes a little longer before the first wakeup, but that’s it.

Things we aren’t willing to try:

• Bringing him to bed with us.
• Messing with his naptime: it’s pretty steady at 12-2 PM or so and I see no reason to fuck with a good thing there.

Things I tried before that sucked and I didn’t stick with them but I guess I’m willing to try again:

• Crying it out, Ferber-style or otherwise
• Watering down the milk in his bottle (oh my GOD. He was SO FUCKING MAD. It was like holding a LIVE HORNET. A FAT ANGRY BOTTLE-THROWING HORNET)

Your sleep-improvement suggestions are more than welcome, as always.

Lastly, to hopefully offset my kvetching in some small way, here’s a video I posted on Flickr this weekend of Dylan first learning to walk. Ah, babies. Even if they suck up your sleep for an entire year and change, they’re worth every compensatory Red Bull.

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