Warning! Weaning!

As noted earlier, Becoming-A-Mom has returned to her shift-work this past week as her maternity leave has come to an end. What this means is that for 4 days in a row, Becoming-A-Dad and Juliette have been spending more Quality Time together.

This is also known by some as Screaming Time.

Becoming-A-Mom has been working night-shift the last 2 nights – 12 hours long, from 7:30 pm to 7:30 am. This means that she nurses Juliette and puts her to bed but is not here for the random-time-of-night feeding(s).

This is a bit of a problem as Becoming-A-Dad does not have functional breasts. At least not in the same functionality as Becoming-A-Mom’s.

First Night: Becoming-Weaned goes to sleep around 6:30 pm, giving Becoming-A-Dad some welcome time to fire up the computer and slaughter zombies. At 10:21 pm precisely  he decides it’s time to go to bed himself.  At 10:21 and 3 seconds he hear’s Juliette wake up and start crying for her night feed. He saves his game and bravely steels his nerves to deal with the other little Zombie.

He picks up his darling little girl (who’s conveniently screaming her head off so he knows where in the crib she is) and holds her and tries to shush and comfort her. This lasts 27.8 seconds until he realizes he’s going deaf in his left ear. He quickly moves to the bedside table and deftly inserts earplugs while still holding on to the now-struggling and screaming Juliette. He sits down in Becoming-A-Mom’s spot in the bed and cradles Juliette as she does. This only increases the volume of crying.

For the next 32 minutes and 17 seconds he holds Juliette and does some extremely ineffective actions aimed at calming her and ending the crying. At 32 minutes and 18 seconds Juliette takes a break from screaming and sobs quietly – sensing his opportunity Becoming-A-Dad gets out of bed and walks around the house. Juliette stops crying and looks around.

Becoming-A-Dad had craftily prepared a small bowl of Juliette’s favorite dessert in the fridge – yoghurt with home-made strawberry jam. He scooped this up and headed back to the bedroom.

He propped Juliette up in Mom’s spot, supported by pillows. She started to cry again, so he quickly dipped the spoon into the yoghurt and put a bit in her open mouth. She stopped mid-cry and opened her eyes. She opened her mouth wide and started to gulp down the yoghurt while looking at Becoming-A-Dad as if to say, “okay, the yoghurt’s good but what the hell is going on?”. She quietly continues to consume the offered yoghurt for the next 3 minutes and 41 seconds. When it’s all gone she rubs her eyes with the back of her hands.

Becoming-A-Dad, sensing victory, carefully picks her up and gives her a big hug while carrying her back to her crib. He places her in the crib and says “good-night!” before beating a hasty retreat to the hallway. He closes the door and tenses for the expected screams. They never arrive.

Frazzled, Becoming-A-Dad returns to killing zombies and other strange critters for the next 2 hours before tip-toeing into bed.

At 2:30 am the process repeats, except this time the crying jag only lasts 6 minutes and no additional zombie-killing is required.

Second Night: Becoming-Weaned sleeps until 2:39 am and wakes up crying as before. This time she only cries for 2 minutes and 19 seconds before calming down. Another bowl of yoghurt and then she’s back to her crib. She cries briefly for 52 seconds before falling asleep until morning.

I think I may have won this.

Without having to grow functional breasts.