Arden has a cold. It's not his first, but he's had some trouble sleeping over the past few nights. Jen and I just got over minor colds, so it was no mystery how he got this. He's still his usual happy and wonderful self. But when it comes time to go to bed, he can't fall asleep and then wakes up periodically because he can't breathe. Nursing helps him clear out, as does being held more-upright, so he manages to go back to sleep one way or the other, but in the meantime we have a sad sniffly boy on our hands.

 

For those non-parents out there, you may be interested to know that babies can only breathe through their noses for the first few months, it's the only way they know how (this is known as ³obligate nose breathing²). So when their nose is stuffy, they can't get air. Eventually, they cry. Crying forces (or allows) them to breathe through their mouth. Unfortunately, it also wakes them up. We learned about this when Arden had his first runny nose. It was neat to learn this, because a few weeks later we realized that he was learning to breathe through his mouth and was actually playing with it, taking deep wheezing breaths for fun.

 

Anyway, the point of this email was to let you in on another of my "fatherhood moments." I've actually had a series of them over the last week, as we've tried to get Arden to sleep better at night. You definitely know your life has changed in a profound way when you find yourself at 1, 3, and 5am with a baby on your lap sucking on your finger and you're trying to figure out how to get him into his crib without waking him back up. But those are expected fatherhood moments, so I didn't think they were profound enough to write about. Today's story isn't really that original either, but it struck me in a different way, and I'm sitting on the floor with Arden and the laptop, so I thought I'd write about it.

 

Last night was a tough struggle to get Arden to sleep because, although he was exhausted and knew it, his nose was just too stuffy for him to drift off. Jen nursed him, we both shushed him, we used the sling, we held him while standing, sitting, and rocking, we tried the humidifier, we considered putting him to sleep in his bouncy chair, etcŠ (To avoid suspense in the story, let me just clue in you that we eventually succeed in getting him to sleep at least for a while.) Anyway, at one point I was on shushing duty and I got a sudden wave of fatherhood when I heard a pathetic stuffy-nosed whimper from the calm and sleepy but unhappy bundle in my arms. His "I'm so sleepy" whimpers can tug your heartstrings any day, but when it was combined with that "I've got a code in by dose" sound, it was particularly pathetic.

 

Like I said, this wasn't a profound or unexpected type of fatherhood moment, but it was special for me, and I thought I'd share.