The Dream Feeds

Omg. I’m sweating. It’s 11:30 pm and I’m sweating. Is it normal to be this terrified of your children?

Ok – I need to set the scene and provide some background info: Piece #1: So – I do the dream feed every night with the boys. (Dream feed is where I feed them when they are still asleep in hopes that they will sleep longer through the night.) I feed Oliver at 10:40 and William at 11:00. It’s the only feeding where we don’t feed them together (no laughing at the mess, the sagginess, or the everlasting sausage arms). Piece #2: While I’m waiting for the dream feed time to come, I get out my ‘pregnancy bag’, as pictured below to send to a friend. I innocently put it on top of a box of diapers in our bedroom, not thinking twice about it. Piece #3: our kids are fairly easily woken up, and they are fairly difficult to put down in the evening, so this time of night is always fraught with a bit of heart pitter patter, wondering if they will actually sleep through the feeding and that I will actually be able to put them down while still sleeping.

Alright, it’s time. I go get our young man Mr. Oliver and bring him back to bed for some noms. Things are going swimmingly, UNTIL, the third child Turtle decided to stretch her paws and get out of bed. Where does she go? Straight for the pregnancy bag of course. Apologies for bad picture quality – they were all taken with my phone with only lamp light.

I’m sitting here with Oliver, who is sleeping and eating, and I see her jump up and poke her nose in the bag. Things go slo-mo. I receive a vision of Turtle jumping in the bag, knocking it over onto the ground with a bang, leaving me to deal with a crying, hungry, angry baby. What do I do?? Deep breaths Lisa; you can do this. So, I take the bottle out of Oliver’s mouth, scoop him up, get out of bed, go over and unhook Turtle’s head, which had managed to get through the handles, grab the bag and go quietly set the bag down in the bathroom and shut the door. I scurry back to bed, lay Oliver back down and stick the bottle back in and look down (heart pounding). Awake! I quickly put my hands over his eyes, so he just sees darkness. Minutes go by, and I peek under my hand. Phew – he’s back asleep. Deep breath – nice save. Then Turtle decides THIS is the time that she wants to meet Oliver (she basically ignores and avoids them). She jumps on the bed and starts moseying her way over. Omg. Omg. Turtle!! Now?? Now you want to check him out??

She gets on the pillow that I’m feeding him on and starts kneading the pillow, looks at him, looks at me, then rips out a loud MEOW. You bitch!

Oliver stirs. I put my hand back over his eyes and give Turtle a dirty look (cuz she could totally get it). He does manage to go back to sleep. Thank God! Finally Turtle settles in next to the O-man. I’m able to finish feeding him, no problems. I put him back in his crib… and we are SAFE.

Child #2. I can still hear my heart in my ears when I pick up Sir William for his feeding. Surely this will go better. I settle him in and put a plug in it. He starts sucking, and immediately gets a ton of air. So we go from this:

To this:

Ok – think Lisa. I pull out the bottle and quickly switch bottle tops – he’s in between nipple sizes, so I’m never quite sure which one he’s going to use. Put the bottle back in his mouth, and put my hand over his eyes, so he just sees dark (inspired by how well it worked with Oliver just moments before). He starts sputtering and choking – crap, ok, the nipple is too big. Pull out the bottle, and switch tops again, back to the original size. Put the bottle back in his mouth – sucks air. Typically I don’t burp during the dream feed, but this was getting out of hand. I could hear the air going all the way down to his stomach. I pull out the bottle, and burp him, swaddle and all on my shoulder. BURP. Let’s try this again. Put bottle back in mouth. Suck, suck, AIR. Suck, suck, AIR. I try different positions, no luck. At this point, he’s SMILING at me, he’s so awake. I’m panicked. Let’s try again. Suck, suck, AIR. Dammit!! Now he just starts playing with the nipple in his mouth, and formula is going everywhere. Clearly not hungry. He ate a whopping 2.5 ounces (out of 7). So, I make the executive decision that he’s done. I pick up his little awake body up and bring him back to his room, where I proceed to rock him to sleep (shhh don’t tell). Finally, I’m able to put him down (almost done Lisa, you can see the finish line). Well, they still sleep in their rockets for their reflux, and I had to velcro him in. I woke him up. NOOOOOO (sweating profusely at this point). So I un-velcro (not quiet, btw), pick him up and rock him back to sleep again. I finally put him down and velcro him in, and he stays asleep.

And there you have an evening of the dream feeds.