Teething Problems

Sleeping struggles, sea urchins and a weekend in Kent

Photo by Omar:. Lopez-Rincon on Unsplash

This is the latest chapter of my book The Flagging Dad, which I’m serialising on Thursdays.

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Jacob is teething. It is hell.

He wakes up several times per night, bawling, and will only allow Louise to comfort him. If I try, the second I enter his room he becomes considerably more distressed and, when I pick him up, attempts to claw at my face and chop my neck. This does little for my self-worth and less for my wife’s opinion of me as a capable husband and father.

The bigger issue, though, is that he likes Louise SO MUCH he refuses to let her put him back in his cot. She can rock him for an hour and he can be snoring like a warthog, but as soon as she tries to lower him down, his eyes open and he starts howling.

This is where I step in. Jacob begrudgingly accepts me as a tolerable halfway house and will remain asleep if Louise hands him over to me. The transition from me to cot is not as extreme and, after I have rocked him for 3-5 minutes, he will let me put him down.

He is reasonable like this.

I appreciate that Louise is putting in the harder yards here. In footballing terms it is the equivalent of her running the length of the pitch, beating several defenders, then squaring it to me for an open goal, but at least I am not completely useless (sometimes I blaze high and wide and we start from the beginning).

On one particularly torturous night we had to repeat our fun system for four hours until Jacob finally settled, and we clambered back into bed as the wood pigeons were starting to coo.

“DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!” Joshua shouted from his bedroom.

It sounded urgent.

I got up and staggered to our elder son’s bedroom.

‘Are you ok, mate? What’s up?’

‘Do sea urchins have eyes, Daddy?’

Obviously this woke Jacob up and the day began.

Black coffees. Cereal in silence.

Photo by Jeff Vanderspank on Unsplash

Jacob is 15 months old, and I’d thought (prayed) we would be getting out of the woods by now. We are very much still in the woods. The kind of in-the-woods where it is getting dark, you are potentially a bit lost but not ready to admit it, and the battery on your phone is worryingly low. We could be here for a while.

In more positive news Joshua is now a fan of mine again. We were in the car and he said, from nowhere, ‘I like you now, Daddy.’ He has offered no explanation as to why this was not the case for nearly six weeks or what has happened to make him change his mind, but I’m glad we are back on track. It would be nice to have both sons like me at the same time, but you can’t be too greedy, can you?

Louise too? Let’s not push it.

With Spring in the air, we spent a long weekend at Louise’s mum’s in Kent. On the drive down I further boosted mine and Joshua’s camaraderie by giving him an irresponsible amount of McDonald’s fries at a service station, our first dining out experience in months. My Big Mac looked to have been slapped together by someone who had hooves for hands, Jacob, overwhelmed by seeing humans that are not in his immediate family, kept trying to climb out of his high chair and onto the table, and a man in a high-vis jacket sat nearby was eating chicken nuggets with his mouth open, loads and loads of ketchup on his chin.

Barring Jacob’s night-time shenanigans and the accompanying whispered bickering between Louise and me, it was lovely to be somewhere other than our own house for a couple of days. We had riverside walks and picnics in parks, and similar to my probation clients on an electronic tag, good times were had between the hours of 7 am and 7 pm.

Good times, however, were conspicuous in their absence on the journey home. Jacob saved his worst until the last night, refusing to be put down by either of us, so Louise eventually brought him into our bed where he squirmed, shouted and scratched at my back all night. At one point Louise told me to get out and ‘find a sleeping bag.’

‘From where?’

‘Go and ask my mum.’

‘Hang on a second? Wake up your mum and ask if she has a sleeping bag?'

‘Just get out, Andy.’

I curled in the foetal position on the floor using a child’s towel as a blanket.

Before we got in the car, our eyes were stinging with exhaustion and, aside from Joshua (fresh from a straight 13 hours’ sleep and three crumpets for breakfast), the mood was sombre. My main concern was not falling asleep at the wheel, but I could see Louise becoming increasingly agitated that Jacob’s morning naptime was approaching and he was showing no interest in nodding off. No interest at all.

Before having children I had no idea that your lives become entirely dictated by their naps. I wish this was not the case. When Joshua was a baby I suggested we try a more casual approach towards naptimes and was met with a look as though I had suggested we drop him off at a pub in Beeston and leave him to fend for himself. I have not mentioned it again and nod in silent approval when Louise talks about the importance of routine.

If Jacob misses his morning nap he becomes ‘overtired’, a dreaded term that usually means the day is going downhill/ruined. As he started to cry in the back, Louise tried to calm him down with a nursery rhyme.

My wife is a wonderful woman and she has many talents. Singing, though, is not necessarily one of them. Jacob responded to her soothing tones by shrieking like a banshee while Louise continued singing “Old McDonald’s Farm” aggressively loudly, straight into my left eardrum.

After half an hour of agony, during which I mulled over the option of opening the door and slinging myself onto the A1, Jacob finally had mercy and fell asleep. Quiet apart from rain pattering on the windscreen and the hum of Classic FM.

Bliss.

‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, Joshua?’

’Do sea urchins have ears?’

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Thanks for reading this installment of The Flagging Dad! Please do like, share, or comment about your own experiences or anything else you fancy.

As per my new thing, here are some recommendations for this week:

• I’m a sucker for silly youthful nostalgia, so I loved this one from Lewis: School disco - by Lewis Holmes - The Ledge Beyond the Edge

• And, I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Puzzo’s post about the kids (at least, some kids) being alright: The Kids Might Be All Right, After All - by Daniel Puzzo

• I went to a gig at Brudenell Social Club in Leeds last night, one of my favourite venues in the world, and saw Olive Jones. It was a brilliant set and it was so refreshing to see that not a single person was on their phone at any point. Highly recommend her new album - listen here: Olive Jones | Spotify

Finally, if you’re feeling especially generous, please consider supporting my nonsense by subscribing or buying me a coffee below.

Cheers!