Of course I won’t really be putting my kid up on Craigslist, but when you’re up for the fourth time in a night you start to think about it.

My son is normally a great sleeper but about every sixth week or so (my wife and I think it’s during his growth spurts) he becomes a crying night time mess.

It usually starts with a small fit about two hours after he goes to bed. I’ve found this is remedied by just going in and patting his back. After the back patting I put him back in bed and pray it’s not going to turn into one of “those” nights.

If I go back to bed and make it through the night without any more problems great but most times I’ll hear from him again at about 3am. This is when I’ll need to bust out the Three Point CheckList.

1. Does his diaper stink?  - We check this first because I’ve found it easily can cause him to wake up and go crazy. Plus it’s a quick check and an easy solve.
2. We bust out a cup of milk (or really tough nights we return to the bottle) - During the growth spurts his eats a large dinner (plus another dinner we call Post Dinner) so I can assume he is going through a lot of calories and nothing can wake a kid faster can an empty stomach. Another advantage of milk is that it might calm him back to sleep
3. Drugs - If the kid is still not happy and unwilling to go to sleep after all that we bust out the Ibuprofen. It’s not found in the store under the category “Miracle Worker” but sometimes it might as well be. Whether it is tooth pain, a stomach bug or just a case of unhappiness it can usually be squashed by 50mg of liquid relief.

 If after those three things he is still going crazy and won’t go to bed I just throw up my arms and allow my wife to bring him to bed. No sleeping for adults that night.

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