The other night I had some problems calming Owen down. He was having gas pains, and crying, and the usual things that we do to help him relax weren't working. I went through the spectrum of things I know how to do and he just kept getting more upset, and I got frustrated with my inability to do anything about it.
My lovely wife took him and calmed him down. She has a truly amazing, completely bottomless well of patience where he is concerned.
When I try things I expect to work, and they don't, and I can't see why, I get frustrated, and pretty soon the frustration is a bigger problem than the problem I was originally trying to solve. It's a bad part of how my brain works that I try to avoid but often can't. I can tackle hugely complicated, truly enigmatic problems, where nothing works and nothing makes sense, and that's okay; I can grind away at them until they crack. But a much simpler problem can derail me completely, because I get frustrated that things that ought to work aren't working.
Later on that night, my lovely wife woke up Owen for feeding, but his gas pains kept him fussy and unable to eat. When she sorted him out, he was over-hungry, and was having problems getting a good latch, so she couldn't feed him. He couldn't eat because he was too frustrated about being frustrated about not eating.
It was kind of an amazing moment, in a funny way, because I knew exactly what was going on in his head, exactly what he was feeling. I'd just never seen it from the outside before.
My lovely wife took him and calmed him down. She has a truly amazing, completely bottomless well of patience where he is concerned.
When I try things I expect to work, and they don't, and I can't see why, I get frustrated, and pretty soon the frustration is a bigger problem than the problem I was originally trying to solve. It's a bad part of how my brain works that I try to avoid but often can't. I can tackle hugely complicated, truly enigmatic problems, where nothing works and nothing makes sense, and that's okay; I can grind away at them until they crack. But a much simpler problem can derail me completely, because I get frustrated that things that ought to work aren't working.
Later on that night, my lovely wife woke up Owen for feeding, but his gas pains kept him fussy and unable to eat. When she sorted him out, he was over-hungry, and was having problems getting a good latch, so she couldn't feed him. He couldn't eat because he was too frustrated about being frustrated about not eating.
It was kind of an amazing moment, in a funny way, because I knew exactly what was going on in his head, exactly what he was feeling. I'd just never seen it from the outside before.
No comments:
Post a Comment