Babies are weird. There’s no way around it. I know that you are most likely shouting at me right now, telling me how wrong I am. BABIES ARE CUTE! BABIES ARE ADORABLE! BABIES ARE PRECIOUS!!!
Stop yelling. I can’t hear you through your computer screen. And besides, babies are still weird.
Case in point: What is the deal with dream feeding?
I first encountered dream feeding last fall when my wife was having to travel for job interviews. She would be gone for 3 days at a stretch, leaving me alone and solely responsible for our then four month old baby. At the time, our son was still waking up for one feeding per night. Since I don’t have the proper anatomy to feed him on the spot, I was worried about the delay in warming up a bottle. My son would potentially rouse much more thoroughly while waiting and would be much harder to get back to sleep. The entire bottle warming process took about 6 minutes. That's an eternity to a 4 month old baby. Plenty of time to get nice and riled up.
So my wife suggested that I set myself an alarm and dream feed my son. He was waking up pretty consistently between 3:30 and 4 am. I could set an alarm for 3 and have plenty of time to warm the bottle in a peaceful haze of sleepiness before he woke himself from hunger. And I'd avoid a crying baby. I could then feed him, while he was asleep, and simply put him back in his crib. And he wouldn't have any idea that any of it occurred!
Just combine these two pictures and you'll get the idea.
At the time, it worked beautifully. I don't know what kind of magic babies are under but you can totally feed them while they sleep. They're like those poor shmucks with too high a dose of Ambien who wake up while eating the most bizarre things. I know someone who awoke while drinking olive oil because of Ambien. It happens. This thing with my son was totally like that except he's on some crazy baby instinct version of Ambien and he's drinking expressed breast milk.
I'd never feed my baby straight olive oil.
This past week, which is now 5 months after those first forays into dream feeding, I had the opportunity to try it out again. We think HE'S going through some sort of growth spurt or who knows what because he's eating a ton and he woke up for middle-of-the-night feedings on two occasions last week. He typically sleeps through the night now and we’re no longer accustomed to being put upon by demands of food while we’re sleeping. It’s like a restaurant waitstaff clocked out and went home for the evening only to get phone calls from customers requesting they bring an extra side of fries. No, sir. Let us sleep.
So I busted out the old dream feeding skill set and went to work. He rouses a bit more now at the beginning of the feeding than he used to but not to any meaningful extent. I can still coax milk down his gullet while he is completely out. It’s been a few nights since and whatever was happening seems to be over now. He’s back to sleeping straight through.
I’m really curious when this stage will end. I’m sure I could google it but that takes 3 seconds of effort. No matter when it does end, the entire enterprise is pretty weird. If I woke up in the middle of the night and my wife was feeding me cheerios or some such nonsense, I wouldn't be happy or satisfied in the least. First, why is she doing that? I'm old enough to make my own food choices, thank you very much. Secondly, why cheerios? When I wake up and scream in fright, the bowl is going to go flying. Then they're going to land in our bed, only to get crushed. We have cheerio dust in our bed. Are you happy now?
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