Bedtime Update

Last time you heard from me I was stealthily rolling across the floor and not so stealthily crashing into the furniture. Baby M has now been in his toddler bed a little over a week and I'm glad to report that things are looking up.

The first few nights were terrible. He'd get out of bed and pound on the door crying "Mommy, Mommy." Our brief foray into sleep training when Baby M was an infant was bad enough, now that he can ask for me by name it is unbearable. We consulted our sleep books and asked friends and family for suggestions. The overwhelming majority recommended that I go into his room periodically, put him back in the bed and then leave again. Do not give in to his demands that "Mommy lie down." In fact, many suggested that I not interact with him at all. Others allowed for a curt "It's time to sleep," and a few were generous enough to tack on a "Mommy loves you." But no way, under any circumstances, was I to remain in the room with him. That would teach him that he needed a crutch to sleep, or that he could manipulate me or some other equally negative lesson.

But here's the thing, we followed the Ferber/Graduated Extinction/Whatever-you-call-it method of checking and leaving and we ended up listening to Baby M cry for nearly 3 hours. All of us felt lousy by the end of the night. But what we discovered was that if I agreed to go sit on the couch, Baby M would patter happily over to his bed and lay down. He no longer demanded that I read him stories while he laid there. He didn't throw his blankets on the floor and cry for me to bring them back and he didn't need me to hold his hand. He just rolled over and was asleep in 20 minutes. So our new routine is to read him a story, put him to bed and then sit on the couch for the 20 minutes it takes for him to fall asleep.

And, really, what is so bad about that? So I spend 20 or 30 minutes sitting in a darkened room, reading, meditating, or just zoning out. How exactly is this detrimental to Baby M? Maybe he is trying to see if he can control me, or maybe he is afraid of the dark or maybe he just needs some extra affection right now.

Sometimes it is good just to sit. One of the overlooked benefits of children is that they force us to slow down and appreciate the moment. To stop and notice the leaf that looks like a butterfly, the jolt of surprise when a bubble pops on your cheek and the wonder of sitting quietly and watching your child sleep.

Sleep Training Wimp

So I have a confession to make. My almost one year old baby does not sleep through the night. He wakes crying 2-3 times a night and I grudgingly make my way down the hall and nurse him back to sleep. He does not nap willingly and in fact must be nursed to sleep on my queen sized bed. If I try to get up after he falls asleep or even detach his greedy little mouth from my breast he will wake, sit up, scream and refuse to go back to sleep. I don't like to admit any of this and try not to bring up the topic of sleep, although after a year of not sleeping I suspect the bags under my eyes and a tendency to sound like George W might be tipping people off to the fact that I have failed at teaching my child to sleep. (Today I told an acquaintance that I was afraid of Baby M getting "strampled" on the playground, my own little Bushism combining "stampeded" and "trampled").

It's not that I don't know what needs to be done; I've read plenty of sleep books and gotten all sorts of advice from well meaning friends and strangers. Part of the problem is that there is always a good reason to postpone the sleep training-- we're leaving on a trip, or just got back from a trip or Baby M is sick or teething, etc. etc. Another part of the problem is that Baby M is a particularly stubborn baby who really doesn't like the idea of going to sleep. And the final part of the problem is that I am a wimp who can't let my baby cry. Yes I have read The No Cry Sleep Solution and the Baby Whisperer's "Pick Up Put Down" method and they do not work for us. Baby M does not care if I am in the room, rubbing his back or singing him a lullaby, he will jump up and down shaking his crib rail and screaming until he chokes. Perhaps the old PUPD method would have worked when Baby M was smaller, but I cannot repeatedly lift a 23 lb baby up and down without throwing my back out. I really wanted to believe Jodi Mindell's claim that after breaking the nurse to sleep connection my baby would be sleeping through the night within 2 weeks, but after months of reading Goodnight Moon and putting my baby into the crib awake, he still is up a few hours after he goes to sleep. So I'm left with Weissbluth's "Extinction / Graduated Extinction" or the Sleepeasy Solution both of which require some crying.

I know a bit of crying is not going to hurt Baby M, and if it helps all of us get some sleep it may be worth it. I admit that I am more often grouchy and short tempered because I am tired. And since I have to nap with Baby M that means when he is awake I spend time doing chores instead of interacting with him. As plenty of people have pointed out he used to cry when I put him in his carseat and I still just gave him a kiss, turned up the radio and went on my way. But somehow the idea of him alone in the dark, crying out for me and not getting an answer just kills me. I remember being a young child and calling out for my mother, if she hadn't come I would have been devastated. Plus, as someone who was prone to histrionics as a teenager I know how lousy you feel after sobbing uncontrollably for an hour-- puffy eyes, snotty nose, your whole face hurts.

But even with these mixed feelings, every few weeks I tell my husband, "okay, this weekend we're doing sleep training" but every week I wimp out. I wonder what this means for my parenting skills? Am I already a bad parent? Am I going to be one of those mothers who can't discipline her kid? Am I going to end up with a bratty Baby M? I mean if I can't teach my baby to sleep, which is a biological imperative, how am I ever going teach him to share on the playground or say thank you or stand up for the funny looking weird kid that everyone else teases?

Reading the Experts

As I mentioned before I have a boatload of parenting books, but I found that the more I read the worse I felt about my parenting. Brazelton states that by now I should have established good communication with Baby M and be able to easily identify and meet his needs. Nope-- I still have no idea why he is crying 70% of the time. The Baby Whisperer says I should get Baby M on a 4 hour feeding schedule. You've got to be kidding me-- this kid starts frantically smacking his head against my chest after 2 and a half hours. Weissbluth recommends "extinction" (essentially "Cry It Out") to get your baby to sleep through the night. After a grueling 10 weeks of colic I am not inclined to see how long Baby M will cry before finally conking out from exhaustion. I know he has the stamina to go for hours.

So, as if I didn't have enough conflicting advice, last week I decided I that I also needed to read the Dr. Sears book and checked it out from the library. I knew the basics of Attachment Parenting and while still pregnant had pretty much decided that it wasn't for me, but since I was carrying or wearing Baby M for large parts of the day, nursing frequently and had started letting him sleep in our bed for part of the night I thought there might be something to AP after all. At a minimum I figured I would start feeling better about what I was doing and stop worrying that Baby M would be clingy, sleep deprived and a failure in American society for the rest of his life (although possibly successful in Japanese society according to Brazelton).

When I got to the chapter on fussy babies I nearly fell off the couch. Sear's profile of the fussy baby described Baby M perfectly. "Demanding"- yep; "I just can't put him down" - check; "Wants to nurse all the time" - definitely. Finally it seemed someone was writing about my baby and not some ideal bay laying in an antique crib on the other side of town. Dr. Sears validated all the things that I have been doing just to get through the day and it was great to finally read a parenting book that didn't make me feel like I was setting my child up for a lifetime of issues. And perhaps more importantly, the book helped me re-frame how I see Baby M. He's not "grumpy" or "fussy" he is "High Needs." And he isn't torturing us, he's just demanding a higher standard of care, which means, hopefully, that we will ultimately be better parents.

Nowadays my advice to new parents is to read a limited number of books and just do what it takes to keep your baby happy and healthy. I know this seems obvious and if I had read this statement before having Baby M I probably would have said "No Duh", but then I had a baby and he was so small and delicate and I didn't want to mess him up and I figured these experts knew more than I did. I still don't feel that I'm an expert on Baby M, but I do realize that I probably know a bit more about him than a stack of books.