Wailing Baby (baby centric)

I could put this up on Baby X's page, but I feel like sharing without making people click over to the other page.  You might want to skip this one if you're in a sensitive place.

Baby X has always been a great night sleeper.  Naps, not so much, but he started sleeping 6-hour stretches before he was a month old, and basically slept through the night before he was 6 months old.  The nap thing drove us insane however, and we would tell the day care to try to get him to sleep more by paying more attention to his tired cues.  But in the infant room, the babies are all on different schedules, there was always some babies playing and I think he felt like he'd miss out if he slept.  So, one 45 minute nap a day was his "normal".  (The Hea.lthy Sl.eep Happ.y Chi.ld book tells me he's going to have a lower IQ because of this.  To which, I happily throw the good doctor double birds).  He would sleep a little more on the weekends, but not much, and his 7pm bedtime is definitely set in stone.

Fast forward to the toddler room transition.  They transitioned him to the toddler room over the course of a couple of weeks, and he had no problem with the transition, we thought.  Maybe a little confused at first, seemed a little sad a couple of the days that the infant teachers took him over there, but then would get over it and play away the day.  The days that they had him in there for full days, he napped on the cot (at the same time as the other toddlers) for almost 2 hours.  What?! Yay!

At the same time that he's been transitioned to the toddler room, we're trying to wean him from formula to whole milk.  That hasn't been going well.  He doesn't act like it bothers his tummy, but he's had some impressive blowouts (one of which occurred during Cit.y Par.k Ja.zz in front of my friends.  haha, let's see if they want kids now after witnessing that pile of poo sitting on his stroller seat.)  So, we're tinkering with formula/milk combinations, he's in the toddler room full time, he's taking 1.5 to 2 hour naps, and coming home overtired, overstimulated, and impossible to deal with. So much for the longer naps helping.  We get him home at 5pm, try to feed him right away (if he hasn't passed out in the car already), and usually that ends with him having a meltdown, flinging food and screaming.  (I use baby sign language, how come he isn't? argh!).  So, lately, it's been a struggle to get him properly fed before putting him to bed.  That translates to back to nightly bottles when he wakes up hungry, plus dealing with diarrhea on a regular basis while his gut acclimates to the cows milk. 

It's been so frustrating lately, and last night things got worse. I got home from my workout at about 7pm, and S looked like Baby X had thrown up all over him.  Nope, just flung some chicken and stars, was crying, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't play, inconsolable.  So, I took Baby X, fed him a bottle and put him down for the night.  That worked (I thought).  Until 9:00pm when the wailing began.  We checked on him, tried to calm him down (it didn't work), and then at 9:30 finally decided to change his diaper even though it should have been fine because it was a nightime cloth with wool cover.  That, plus trying to calm him down by bringing him in our bed for a few minutes worked, and he went back to sleep pretty easily.  At 1:30am wailing non-stop from his room, again.  S got up, changed his diaper, put him to bed.  At 6:30am, crying again, I go in, change his diaper, and what do I see?  Angry. Red. Butt. Cheeks.

He has a diaper rash.  Probably because of the diarrhea, and every time his diaper gets wet it hurts like a mofo.  At least that's my interpretation of ear-piercing howls.

I didn't think to take a closer look when changing his diaper last night since he hasn't had a diaper rash previously.  Do you know what's going through my head instead?  "It's because he knows I'm not his birthmother, S isn't his birthfather, and he's figuring it out and he's not going to let us calm him down." 

And there you have it.  A simple problem made unnecessarily complicated in my head.