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| From Bambini |
The first photographic evidence of baby torture by the fashion nazi in the family. In case any of you are having difficulty reading that body language, its "aaargh what the haeck are you doing, I was perfectly comfortable in my stinky old wrap with the familiar scent of pee and dried milk barf ". More pictures of the abuse are in the album here.
It seems that us men are not well equipped to deal with baby screaming. I am also convinced that instead of breast feeding, Barbara us actually torturing the babies. This is probably due more to lack of sleep then anything else, but the screaming is so bad even her girlfriends wonder weather they should call the police after listening to 10 seconds of it down the phone. Let me assure you, in person it is hair raising!
I have delayed writing this blog as I try to figure out how to deal with this topic in a blog read by all of our friends and relatives, as well a group of people that know me from my college days when I was more reluctant to entertain the idea of children. In my sleep deprived paranoia, I imagine them waiting for the kind of train wreck you see on the news every few years with box cars scattered everywhere and flames leaping sixty feet into the air as some hazardous material burns fiercely. Well let me assure you, that time has come.
The last few weeks have certainly been that, at least emotionally. There are so many things that have changed, and more things that are changing so fast its hard to integrate it all in the time available.
While most of our friends talk about this period as being "difficult but rewarding", there is never anything more revealed. I assume this is because we all want to present our best to the world. I suspect that we cannot be the first couple to suddenly be faced with these challenges and can often be in disagreement about what a baby needs at any given moment. I am often surprised by how different even our basic parenting skills can be.
Growing up, if there was something precious that you were about to be given charge of, like say a new bicycle, there were hours of intense instruction about what not to do complete with stern warnings by imposing figures of authority, followed by some technical theory and finally a day of supervised hands on training.
There is regulation for every aspect of our lives it seems from driving a car to owning a dog, but with children, you are handed possibly the most precious "new toy" you will ever get and just left to get on with it.
This all finally boiled over into a long "spirited" discussion after minutes of baby screaming while Barbara was trying to breast feed. Despite being hungry, they get all freaked out and cannot latch as they don't have full coordination of their bodies yet. The ensuing head thrashing and body churning reminded me more of landing a large shark by fishing line than any idyllic picture of baby feeding.
As I get more and more uncomfortable, Barbara gets more nervous and the problem worsens to the point where we are all freaked out. Add that to a long day, work piling up and lost sleep and you have a recipe for a 30 second divorce.
Luckily, we have spent a lot of time developing our communication skills and the trust to be able to express more deeply than inventory taking. After a while of we got to the bottom of it. Somewhere, someone had said to Barbara; "you must not feed them from the bottle before breast feeding". This "rule" had become the most important aspect of this activity to Barbara, and was now causing a problem.
Hungry babies, especially when they have just woken up, are like little Camero's on the interstate screeching toward a car wreck. You literally have seconds to react or you will feel the full impact of their primal survival need. Trying to adhere to some fragment of "wisdom" in the face of this was not working. We began to discuss it and some solutions and experiments emerged.
We finally agreed to treat them like drug addicts when they are at that moment. They could get a few hits off of the crack pipe (feeding bottle) to keep them calm and then transition onto the breast while temporarily stunned. This was my engineers idea and seems to work when needed, leading to happy babies and happy wife. We all know that happy wife = happy life.
So this was one way in which we got derailed. The days leading up to the moment when we identify something has gone "wrong" and begin to work our way to the source, get progressively more difficult as feelings are hurt. I wish I could say this was the only issue, but there have been many in the last few weeks. With all that's going on we have to make time to discuss in detail and hammer out agreements that work for both of us.
To add to the difficulty these situations present, both babies have become more difficult to get to sleep. It used to be that if they were cranking, it was either they were hungry, uncomfortable or needed a diaper changed. Now they need constant attention. I was hoping it would get easier, instead it seems it is getting harder.
So while I would like to leave you with the impression that it is all bad (it is) I would be in trouble if I did not mention some milestones in the last couple of weeks, Nico's first smile (followed his first 2 hour crank session - I guess it does cost something to smile these days) and Luca's first smile. We're not sure what either were smiling about, but I assume its just the realization that they now have us on a very short leash!
