Those 19 years: A Harry Potter fanfiction

Chapter 60

Harry's POV:

"Harry," Ginny says that night as we lay in bed. She has a book propped open on her lap. "Look at this..."

I roll over and read over her shoulder. "Self-soothing," I read. "What's that?"

Ginny points to a paragraph, "it's basically when babies can soothe themselves back to sleep, instead of being rocked to sleep. You have to help them learn how."

I skim the page lightly. "Okay, when should we start?"

"Well... it says around 3-6 months old. And James is 6 and a half months. So now." She laughs. "But it's a process. First we need to start putting him to bed at a normal time, something we are not very good at." Ginny skims the page again. "Naps included. Also, we need to see how he takes to it. Each baby is different."

I nod and read further. "But James is pretty calm. It shouldn't be too hard, right? I don't really think he's attached to either one of us, more than the other I mean." Ginny nods, chewing on her lip. "What?"

"I think he's a bit more attached to you." She says. "It's not bad or anything."

I shrug. "Maybe. Anyways so after we set up a routine, then what?"

"Well, some kids stuck their thumb but he's never really done that... but he does love that blanket my mum made him."

"Out of our shirts?" I ask.

"Yeah. We can associate that with bedtime." Ginny shrugs. "We may also have to just let him cry until he falls asleep sometimes. We just have to figure it out, I guess."

. . .

I lay James down in his crib. "Good night, buddy." I give him the blanket and walk out of the room.

James let's out a small whine. "Da..." he whispers.

My heart squeezes, I want to pick him up. "Good night, James. Go to sleep."

I shut the door and walk down the stairs. Ginny is cleaning the dishes, a glass of wine sits beside her. "All okay?" She asks.

I shrug. "More or less I guess we're just going to have to wait and see."

That night we don't get much sleep, James wasn't having any of it. Ginny wound up rocking him back to sleep. I took over once he started to cry again.

I laid down next to her. "Maybe we should read the whole part on self-soothing before we try to do it."

She laughs and rolls into my arms. "Shut up, I know. You distracted me."

I laugh and kiss the top of her head. "Yeah well..."

. . .

"It says that to start using a comfort object we should let him hold it while we feed him or hold him. So he starts to connect comfort with it." Ginny tells me the next morning as James chews on my finger.

"Okay what else?"

"We can try warming his crib, some babies like music or white noise." Ginny says. "Harry I think that we will just have to do trial and error with this."

"What did we do with Teddy?" I ask, not remembering most of Teddy's infant years because of sleep deprivation.

She laughs. "I'm not sure I remember either. But he turned out okay. He was also staying with Andromeda some nights."

"We are horrible parents," I laugh with her, she shakes her head.

"Harry?" Teddy asks as he walks into the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He trips over the edge of it, sending him falling to the ground.