Good Timing

It seems so often in life that timing is everything. And while being up at 1 AM nursing my seven-month old (who is fully capable of sleeping through the night, mind you) is rarely a good time for anything, last night that proved not to be the case. Because last night, in the middle of the night, was the perfect time for me to find and read this article (thanks to my cousin who posted it on Facebook). So, even though it was in the wee hours of the morning (and after William had already been awake once, mind you), it was refreshing to read this:

I was at the Moms’ Group Christmas party and Kai’s mom looked at him and said, “Buddy, are you tired?” She then spread a receiving blanket on the floor, put this slightly cranky child down and he fell asleep. He fell asleep! What the hell?!? Clearly she’s drugging this kid. No shushing. No patting. No nursing. No driving around the block pleading. The little bugger just fell asleep. I swear to God I wanted to drop kick the fruit tray across the room and scream, “What the fuck am I doing wrong!?”

It turns out nothing. Because I have decided that there are certain kinds of babies.

• There are babies that are smart and say, “If it’s really quiet or I’m not moving, that means that they’ve forgotten me and I don’t want to be left under a bush somewhere so, helloooooo!”
• Then there are some babies that are smart and say, “If I can’t feel a warm body near me then that means I’m unprotected and a dingo is going to eat me so, helllloooooo!”
• Then there are some babies that are smart and say, “You know what is great? A boob (swaddle, pacifier, rocking, or whatever) because it totally does the trick to get me to sleep. Yet, you seem to have forgotten that so, helllllloooo!”
• Then there are some babies that are smart and say, “Hot damn, I’m a baby and get to sleep whenever I want. I’m just going to lay into this swaddle sack and catch some serious zzzzs.” I’m also convinced that these were the babies that were historically left under bushes and/or eaten by dingoes.

All of the sleep books out there? They work. They just don’t work for every baby. You are standing in front of a door with a thousand keys and only one of them fits.

So my advice is this, absolutely keep reading the books. Keep trying new stuff. But don’t feel like you’re failing if you have to hold, swing, rock, move that baby to get them to go to sleep because that just happens to be the type of smart kid they are. That door will eventually unlock and swing open whether you find that magical key or not.

Think of it this way, babies are constantly changing, so anything you do today can all go out the window tomorrow.  Some people think of this as a negative: “You better be careful when he starts teething because you’ll lose all of that sleep training progress.” Whereas, I think we should think of it as a positive: “Who gives a crap if she sleeps in the swing all night? Next week she may have it totally figured out because she isn’t going to be 22 at college sleeping in her Rock n’ Sway.”

 

It is often a blessing and a curse that I have quite a few friends with children close in age to William; I love the opportunities for play dates, but as a naturally competitive person, I often find myself comparing William to others (even though Darrell has reminded me time and time again that I shouldn't). And when I have friends with little ones younger than William who consistently sleep through the night, I can't help but think that it is something I'm doing wrong that is preventing William (and us!) from getting a full night's rest. Like the author of the article, I often find myself forgetting that William is not the same as my friends' babies and won't respond to the same techniques they do. In fact, William is not the same baby that he was yesterday, and what worked one day might not work the next. While the scientist in me wants to find a process for naps and nighttime sleep that produces consistent and reproducible results, babies just don't work like that. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get that through my head one of these days--maybe a day when I'm feeling just a bit less sleep-deprived.