It's three in the morning and I've been up for over an hour and a half listening to Gabriel cry. We're trying to break him of his middle-of-the-night feeding for the first night. Supposedly we have to go through this to get him to realize he'll have to eat more during the day. I've been in to comfort him a couple of times, scratch his back and tell him everything's ok, and once to change his diaper and give him something for teething pain. But I'm not supposed to cuddle or rock him, which goes against every maternal instinct I have.
Oddly enough, this is making me think of the book club selection I finished last night. It was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, told from the perspective of a boy with autism. He doesn't like to be touched, and instead of hugging, his parents hold up their hands with fingers spread to touch his fingertips, and this means that they love him and he loves them back in his own way. I can't imagine how tough it would be to fight the cuddle instinct all the time.
And now my stomach is growling, but I'll be damned if I'm going to eat anything when I know he's in there hungry. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
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