Monday, February 25, 2008

Closer inspection

Avtalyon had a rough night last night. (Was it only last week he was sleeping six hours at a stretch?!) There was much screaming, and much "I cannot possibly sleep unless you are holding me so do not even think of putting me down no no oh God oh God DON'T PUT ME DOWN NO NO NOOOOOO!"

After a couple of hours of this I actually let him cry until he went to sleep by himself, which didn't take very long. If you do not know me and my philosophy on baby-parenting you might not be shocked by this but if you do, you will know that I am morally, philosophically, constitutionally and hormonally opposed to letting newborn babies cry. However there is parenting philosophy and then there are the realities of sleep deprivation; I simply cannot put myself in a position where I am letting him train me to hold him all night. If he were in pain or sick or really bothered by something, ok; but it was fairly clear to me that the only problem was an intense desire to be cuddled all night long. Which... well, sorry, but no.

To make up for it he spent a lot of today in my arms or in the Snugli, and seems to have gotten his quota of snuggles in for the time being. Right at this very moment he is asleep in the very carseat that was anathema not twelve hours ago. It probably helps that he is, you guessed it, parked next to the dishwasher. KitchenAid is not the best for a number of things but when it comes to high-priced baby-soothers boy do they know their stuff. I put my ear next to the dishwasher today, just to see what it is he hears, and danged if there isn't a heartbeat in there. I'm not joking. It's probably the motor, or the sprayer, but whatever's causing it there is a very clear "whumpWHUMP, whumpWHUMP" in the middle of all the rumbling and swishing. When you add in the voices--mine, Iyyar's, and Barak's--he hears faintly in the background of all that noise, it probably adds up to about the closest auditory approximation possible of life inside the womb.

2 comments:

Jasmijn said...

The new apartment has a dishwasher. I'm torn: I've never had one before, and I don't know that the 2 (or 3) of us generate enough dirty dishes to justify running it. I don't even know if we HAVE enough dishes to fill it. On the other hand, maybe it's nice not to hand-wash all the time.

And if any babies should need soothing, I guess there's that. I don't think it'll help the 10-year-old, though.

Glad to hear it helps Avi.

uberimma said...

Running a dishwasher usually uses less water than washing dishes by hand, especially if you don't have a double sink and you wash dishes under running water. I never had a dishwasher till we lived here, but oh my do I love it--for the sippy cups, the cereal bowls, the million and one dirty spoons we seem to generate in a day. True, you're two adults and are not piling up the sippy cups, but even still--the coffee cups and water glasses do add up.