So it’s 3am and both ny wife and I are wide awake now. Nathan woke up fussy, on the verge of crying. We tried to shoosh-pat, pacifier, picking up and swaying, the 5 S’s – everything. Nope, we ended up having to feed the kid.  So my wife is breast feeding him.

In theory, I could sleep when she does this. But practically, that never happens.  I have to prep her pump for her, after the feed I change Nathan’s diapers because he pees when he feeds, and I have to refill the humidifier because its so friggin dry here in SoCal that if we don’t use one Nathan’s nose gets dry and his snots get impossible to remove.  So after all of that, I’m awake and here I am bloggin from my phone (ok, that parts cool).

Everyone keeps yelling me that we need to do it in shifts, but I don’t see how that is possible when we both have things to do for the baby.  For those of you guys who do this in shifts, how do you do it?

So here’s my boy asleep.  He has been a pill all day, all weekend in fact.  He’s been cranky, ill tempered and impatient.  Not sleeping and when he does, only for 30 minutes at a time.  And yet, once he settles down, knocks out and gets peaceful, he tickles my heartstrings and just makes me break out into a big giant grin.  I’m exhausted, tired, sleepy and hungry, and yet, all I want to do is stare at this kid.

There’s something my parents used to tell me when I was a kid.  During meals, I’d sometimes find them just staring at me without eating, and I’d ask them why they did that and why they weren’t eating.  Their answer was (and I’m going to paraphrase very badly from Korean) that “even if I don’t eat, just looking at you makes me feel full”.  When I was a child, I thought that was dumb, then as I got older I understand conceptually what they meant.  But now that I have this little guy, I think I really do understand what they meant.