To wit...
1. Swaddling. It's basically a straight jacket, but with a frog pattern, which makes it okay. Newborns shudder a lot, and that makes their yet-to-be-controlled arms flail about uncontrollably, which wakes them up in the middle of the night.* So you swaddle them. Forcing their arms down. Mostly against their will.
*For no good reason. As opposed to the perfectly legitimate ones that happen 3 times a night.
Watch as this woman restrains a baby in a track suit.
2. Keeping Him In A Cage/Watched At All Times. The cage/crib analogy is pretty obvious--"Back to the Future" did it best--but it's one thing to be kept in captivity. It's another to feel like eyes are on you at all times. Babies need constant attention, but if they only knew how much spy attention we gave them. We've placed listening devices in their rooms, we keep them guarded at all times, they rarely see the sun or get fresh air. And we're constantly monitoring how often and how much they poop. Creepy.
3. Torture. Often times, Henry falls asleep while nursing, and every single doctor and expert says wake him up by any means necessary. Not that American lives are at stake, but this basically means mild torture. It starts with the face, where we rub his cheek and chin, trying to get him to open his mouth (our way of making him talk, if you will). Babies don't like to be cold, so another trick is to undress him. Remember that?
The last resort, as any good torturer will tell you, is water. We play with his toes dry at first, but then we start dripping cold water on them.
As you can imagine, we feel GREAT about doing all of this.
