A Brother-to-Brother Thing

I absolutely hate to hear my children cry. I get as worked up as they are when they're screaming and I feel like screaming myself. There's nothing worse than hearing the sobs of a baby - especially when they’re hell bent on exercising their lungs to make sure you’re good and aware that they are upset and you can do little to soothe them. So tonight when Nico woke up exactly one hour after he went down to bed, belting out an angry scream announcing that he wanted out of bed immediately, my heart just sank.

Nico goes to bed like a charm. He never wakes up at night anymore (unless Roger is singing to Rockband which is bound to wake the dead). We’re well done with the middle of the night feedings and after all, he is a Gronke – he likes his sleep! But over the last week he has woken up twice shortly after going to bed and when he woke up tonight the memory of trying to get him back to sleep the other night quickly came flooding back: the hour of belly rubbing and singing and rocking, only to let him cry it out in the end (he only cried for two minutes but it felt like an eternity).

My impending (and probably over-exaggerated) pain must have been obvious because Riley offered to put Nico back to bed. My first thought was to tell him that it wouldn’t do any good and it would just make Nico mad if Riley went in there without me – this is only a job a mother can do. And continuing to focus on the impossibility of putting my baby back to sleep I thought to myself, thanks for the offer but you don’t know how to do this and you definitely don’t have the patience required to battle it out with a determined 18 month old. But I refrained from my vocalizing my negativity as this would only produce an argument – arguing at everything is an automatic response of teenagers. Instead, I offered my thanks and sat back to watch him writhe in the misery.

But to my bewilderment and slight dismay, about 30 seconds later, I heard the deep even breaths of a sleeping baby purring from the baby monitor.

Riley popped back down the stairs to continue eating his after dinner, dinner as if nothing monumental had just occurred upstairs. “What did you do?” I probed. Casually he replies, “I just rubbed his belly and talked to him. It’s a brother-to-brother thing. We have an understanding.”

Could I perhaps be missing out on a Mother-to-Baby thing?