I feel and look like I just spent the entire night beating my face against a brick wall.

I tend to brag about my kids being good sleepers. I do this because I compare each night to the first eight months I spent with Nicholas, where I was up three or four times every single night feeding him. I had to stop breastfeeding him and start giving him a bottle for him to start waking only once a night. And eventually he began sleeping all the way through, from 7pm to 6am. Just in time for me to get massively pregnant and need the sleep.

Nathan seemed like a magical baby. He started off sleeping for four or five hours at a time, and I had to wake him to feed him, which I think is insane, but I was afraid because he was jaundiced and I was supposed to be feeding him a lot. Eventually, though, his color improved and he would wake only once a night, and then he'd be up very early in the morning (5am-ish). I was ecstatic. I knew things were going really, really well. I even started giving up my nap in the afternoons to work out or do chores.

Well, for the past four nights Nathan has been waking up every two hours. I get tired and resentful going in there to feed him so much. I know many people would let him cry it out, but I feel he's still very young, and he may honestly need to be fed. Also, HE SHARES A ROOM WITH NICK which causes all sorts of trouble.

Last night I had to change Nate's sleeper because of a leaky diaper. But the outrage this little baby projects at not being fed RIGHT AWAY is amazing. He screams as though I'm pricking him with pins and lfails his little body around making it very difficult to change him quickly in the dark, especially as I am still half asleep. His screams wake Nick, who sits up in bed, crying, and then just sits quietly and watches as I finally feed his brother and put him back to bed. I then kiss Nick and rush back to my own bed. But thirty minutes later Nick begins to cry. I am afraid he will wake Nate, so I rush back to the room to comfort him. Nick clings to me and points to the Rocker. "Cha?" he says. He wants to be held and rocked. He is asking me to do my favorite thing in all the world.... but at 3:30am.

It breaks my heart because I know he is so little and can't understand why I feed and hold Nathan twelve times a night but insist he stay in bed by himself. I held him in the chair for five minutes, then told him he had to go back to sleep. He screamed. I ended up having to take Nathan into my room - which I'm sure Nick doesn't understand in the least. I could hear him at the baby gate, speaking into the dark. "Mom? Bye bye?" and then just sobbing.

I am hoping tonight goes a bit mre smoothly. If I need to start giving Nathan a bottle before bed, or even at mindnight, then I will do that. Even if it has to be formula. But I can not have too many more nights like this.

By the way, if anyone was wondering where Steve was in all this, he was sleeping. Really. He woke once when Nick started to cry, but then fell back asleep. If there is anything more irritating than listening to your child cry at 3am, it's listening to your child cry at 3am while your spouse snores into your other ear.