The Sleep Train -it’s one so easily derailed. Vaccinations, teething, illness, ear infections, diarrhea and nausea from the antibiotics used to treat the damn ear infections – all of these things can take a child who has been trained to sleep 10 hours straight at night, and turn him into a Sleep Sucking Demon that will destroy your will to live.
I slept from 4am – 6am last night, fitfully, with a wiggling 7 month old in my bed. He woke at 11pm, just as I was drifting off to sleep, and after trying my best to get him to sleep in his crib (or even with me! Just sleep somewhere!), I finally gave up at about 1am and we went in the front room to watch tv. I have never seen this child so wide awake at such a late hour. I don’t know what was going on – except he woke at 11 because he’s gotten in the bad habit of waking at 11 over the past couple of nights (teething pain and ear infections and the aforementioned evil antibiotics), and then my attempts to force him to stay in his bed just woke him up more, as he got more and more riled up and screamy. And then he was all wired, and couldn’t get himself unwired, and I couldn’t calm him down either. He was perky and smiling, for the most part – just completely, utterly alert. Unless I tried to put him down – then the smiles were gone, and high pitched screaming ensued.
It was an awful night. Though I find that when he gets this way, it’s worse for me to try to sleep through the intermittent wails, because then I just get SO FURIOUS, so angry that he won’t be quiet and let my exhausted body do what it really wants to do. Instead, I give the night up for lost and just decide that I’ll stay awake until he’s given up. I put the tv on low, and sit in the dark room with him, rocking, holding him, and trying to force myself to cherish these nights with my boy. It’s very hard. I mostly just want to hand him over to somebody else, and go to a hotel, and sleep for a week. When my heart and mind is rebelling, I force my hands to make the loving gestures that a mother must make – I cup his little bald head, I rub his back and feet, I pat his bum. Sometimes, those gestures will drag my heart and head with them, into the loving, tender, mother state of mind, and I’ll marvel over him and we’ll gaze in each others’ eyes and have A Beautiful Mother Son Moment. More often, I remain reluctant and pissy, but at least I’m forcing my limbs to perform the work that I promised I would do when we decided to have him. He’ll never know about the heart and head.
This morning I read this sad article on ESPN about a young college basketball player who was killed in a plane crash about ten years ago – you may have seen it making the rounds, I’ve seen it posted on facebook. The father in the article recollects his little boy, at about Liam’s age, refusing to sleep in his crib. The kid was pretty athletic already, and could climb out of the crib somehow and crawl into his parents’ bed. One night they tried really hard to solve the problem, rigging up his crib somehow and then locking the master bedroom door. When they woke the next morning, all they saw were his little fingers stretched under the door. He’d managed to get out, and fell asleep trying to get in to them. This image, of course, brought tears to the dad’s eyes as he thought about his 20 year old son, in the ground.
So I wouldn’t go so far as to say this made me feel guilty. Firstly, if that kid was Liam, he’d have screeched so loudly that I’d have been forced to have gotten up and opened the damn door before he woke up the whole neighborhood. Secondly, I reserve the right to desire sleep and feel grumpy if I don’t get it. Thirdly, I’d let the kid sleep in my bed, happily, if he’d just sleep and not squirm and wiggle and wake constantly!
However. The image of five tiny little boy fingers, splayed under the crack of his parents’ bedroom door, and the deep desire of that tiny boy to be with his mom and dad all the time – this may help me get through tonight, which will likely also be a nightmare as we try, once again, to sleep train this child. For the zillionth time. Knowing it may be futile. If I can’t get him quiet, and if I can’t sleep myself, what I can do is try to focus on the fact that this is a transitory time in my life, and that there will only be a few months more that he will want so desperately to be with me and only me at all times forever and ever Amen. If it wasn’t so exhausting, it would be really, really sweet.
When I come home at the end of the day, he rocks back and forth in his nanny’s arms and squeals in utter delight, reaching for me, desperate to wrap his little fingers up in my hair and suck his thumb, pressing his cheek to mine. When I take a second to look in his eyes, or blow a zerbert on his tummy, or tickle him, or show him distraction-free attention, it just rocks his little 7 month old world. He finds me thrilling, and perfect, and my mere presence is all he (usually) needs to be content. So, ok. I wish it wasn’t so relentless, but it is. And I’ll take it. I take him how he comes.
But I really hope he doesn’t learn how to crawl out of his crib anytime soon, or we’re sunk.
When Abigail was about Liam’s age she completely abandoned the good sleep habits she’d developed. The three month reprieve had caused her sudden wakefulness to make me into a raging psychotic. I was so frustrated and could not figure out why she wouldn’t sleep. Sleep training didn’t work, because unlike every other normal baby on the planet she could very well scream all night long without getting tired. Then we tried something that finally worked and still does to this day. I thought at the time that it was crazy, because bedtimes really seem so arbitrary with babies, depending on when they ate, when they napped, etc. But we decided to try just putting her to bed at the exact same time every night. It worked. You might have tried this already, and that isn’t my point, my point is just that finally finding something that did work was my salvation and I hope you find yours too!
The climbing out of the crib thing occurred to me the other day; I had put Savannah in her crib so I could put away her clothes. I glanced at her while I was doing that, and she was watching me with her chin resting easily on the rail of the crib. I thought, “She could easily get out of that thing if she really wanted to.” I’m on 4.5 hours of sleep right now, she got me up at 4 AM. I feel your pain.
I love how bi-polar this post is….and it’s all true. Every drop of it. Parenting is an exhausting and exhilarating job. It is heart melting,and heart hardening at the same time. It is a complete paradox. For anyone who doubts the almighty, I give you evidence in the millions of mothers and fathers who survived to old age, after being sleep deprived for the better part of 2-20 years (depending on # of children). How he designed us to be adaptable enough that we can ‘return’ to infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood right along with our own children, is rightly a miracle. Good job Mama. Liam will remember none of this, but your love is felt and known. And it’s what will make him whole.