“Mom?”
It was 10:04 p.m. From my late-evening slouch in the
living room -- laptop on knee, butt in beanbag, hot tea within reach – I heard
a plaintive call. A familiar call.
“Mama?”
A far, far, far too familiar call.
Kid, you are eight years old. We are supposed
to be at least four years past this phase. To quote the title of a
delightfully popular picture book that is definitely not intended not for
actual children, Go the &$%# to Sleep.
I wanted to yell these things. I wanted to morph
into Mean Mommy, righteous monster of late-night annoyance. However, long
experience has taught me that anger and frustration will not solve this
particular problem, but will instead turn it into a hideous nightmare of
anguish, guilt and despair.
I heaved my complaining self out of my comfort
zone. I marched the six steps into the twins’ room. I scrambled up
the ladder of their exciting new Big Kid Loft. On the left, Molly was a
faintly snoring quilt-lump. On the right…
I couldn’t see her face distinctly in the dimness of the
multi-colored nightlight, but I could tell she was half propped on one elbow, a
tiny huge-eyed figure amidst a wallowing sea of plush, crochet, and
fleece. One arm was wrapped around an old teddy. The ample bulk of
Winnie the Pooh dwarfed her back. An assorted heap of other fuzzy
creatures spilled across the area that would have contained legs, had the bed
been occupied by a more-than-pint-sized human.
“What’s up, Lizzy?” I whispered.
“It’s…” She hesitated, desperate tension in her
voice. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be awake. She knows she’s not
supposed to call for me. “It’s so… lonely.”
Seriously, kid? Your twin sister’s mattress is,
like TWO FEET away from yours. Our family of four lives in a cabin
that totals less than a thousand square feet, with no real internal
doors.
But this was no calculated manipulation, prevarication,
or ploy. This was the distress of a child who had spent the past forty
minutes lying silently in the dark, waiting in vain for sleep, and fighting the
shameful urge to beg for my help. It was ten at night, and Lizzy
was truly, deeply lonely -- a miniature, solitary insomniac.
For a long time, I didn’t think of her as an
insomniac. No one has an “insomniac” infant, because all newborns
are insomniacs. Whoever invented the phrase “sleeping like a baby” has
never hung out with a minuscule person who doesn’t know the difference between
day and night, and is planning to triple her bodyweight in one year via a
ludicrously tedious sucking process.
Before the kids were born, I tried to mentally prepare
myself. I knew that being the mother of twins would mean that I’d be a
sleep-deprived-lunatic-milk-factory for a while. For the first few
months, I took the mayhem in stride. The fact that I was finishing my PhD
at the same time could be considered an additional exonerating circumstance,
couldn’t it? Molly had some Gassy Infant issues that made her somewhat crankier
than her sister, and Lizzy woke up every time I tried to transfer her off my
lap, but who was really counting? I mean, maybe I hadn’t showered in days
and couldn’t remember my own name, but that was normal, right?
It was only when we’d passed the six-month-mark, when baby
flatulence seemed under control, and when I’d sent all my dissertation chapters
to be bound in hardcover ready for their glorious new life gathering dust in
Rasmuson Library, that it dawned on me that other babies did this amazing thing
called “sleeping through the night” – not to mention “spontaneously napping”
and “falling asleep in cribs”. Some friends of mine actually possessed
such infants! Jay and I wanted to be just like those people!
So, we did what exhausted, frustrated parents do: we
acquired vast amounts of entirely conflicting advice from friends, family, and
iffy internet sites, and then misapplied it in a messy hodge-podge.
We tried fixed routines. We tried lights, music,
nursing the kids to sleep, rocking them to sleep, going for
not-really-necessary drives, putting them in mechanical swings, and endlessly
dragging them around the frozen woods in sleds. I recall, with appalling
clarity, a night when we took turns swinging two car seats – one in each arm,
like horribly awkward metronomes -- until our shoulder joints were on the verge
of dislocating, because it was the only way to make the screaming stop.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE JUST MAKE THE SCREAMING STOP.
Eventually, desperate, we tried Cry It Out. Yeah,
I know, I know: there are strong proponents and even more vociferous opponents
of this method of baby sleep-training. Is it cruel abandonment of a
helpless infant, or is it a sensible way to teach necessary self-soothing
skills? I belonged to neither camp, really. I didn’t know what the
hell I was doing. All I knew was that there were books and articles that
told me, unequivocally, that a baby will learn, relatively quickly, to calm the
heck down and sleep.
Yeah. One baby will.
I can attest that Cry It Out TOTALLY works. Molly
cried for perhaps twenty minutes the first night, and for shorter periods of
time each subsequent evening, until she gave just a token ten-second whimper
before snoring her bald little head off. Yup, those childcare gurus sure
knew what they were talking about!
Except that while Molly was snoring, Lizzy was
screaming.
And screaming.
And screaming.
We let her go for two hours. TWO HOURS.
Anyone who has ever heard a full-on baby-wail for ten seconds … well, you still
can’t imagine what it’s like to hear YOUR baby howling in red-faced choking
despair for a goddamned eternity. It was Hades -- complete with the
three-headed dog, the hydra’s fifty black gaping jaws, and Tisiphone lashing a
whip at the adamantine gates of Tartarus. While my baby’s torment
escalated from woe to fear to abject terror, I hid my head under a pillow and
sobbed.
The empathy was crippling. I couldn’t remember my
own infancy, of course – and my parents tell me that I was a reasonable
sleeper, anyhow. But I do remember the later years of childhood, when –
despite being generally able to sleep – I occasionally spent what seemed like
decades lying awake. I had all kinds of strategies to try to help
myself. I took stuffed toys to bed. I took a red plastic truck to
bed. I tucked the covers super-tight. I did math problems in my
head. (You don’t doubt this, do you? No, of course you
don’t.)
I remember the shame of having the dentist ask me, when
I was five, whether the incipient protrusion of my front teeth might be due to
thumb-sucking? “No, no!” I told him. Technically, I didn’t suck my
thumb, I sucked my index finger – but I knew myself to be a despicable little
liar, nonetheless. I remember hunching under the covers in rigid torment,
trying to fall asleep without that oral comfort. I’d wake with a start in
the darkness to find that the Evil Finger had somehow crept into my mouth
again. I’d start all over, lying on my hands to prevent cheating, and
giving myself pins and needles in the process.
In particular, falling asleep in an unfamiliar bed was
torture. I recall one New Year’s Eve when my parents enjoyed the rare
thrill of attending a Real Grownup Party, and left my sister and me with
Grandma and Grandpa. This was safe and familiar territory -- and yet,
even as Sarah snoozed blissfully next to me on the fold-out couch, I heard the
abysmal ticking of the living-room clock like mocking thunder. Nine
o’clock. Ten o’clock. Eleven. I didn’t WANT to ring in
1979! Do you know how long it takes to get to midnight, alone in the
dark? There are geologic epochs that have been shorter.
As a parent, having a long memory and a modicum of
empathy kind of sucks. It puts you on a guilty hook from which there is no
escape. On that terrible Cry It Out evening, Lizzy and I were both
shaking with adrenalin and exhaustion, with fear and grief, by the time I
finally – finally! – picked up my two-hours-howling baby. Dripping with remorse
and milk, I nursed my tiny human to, at last, an uneasy sleep.
I swore to myself, after Cry It Out, that I was never
going to do that to my kid again. She needed my help going to
sleep? Fine. I no longer cared if I was doing it all wrong. I
no longer cared if I wasn’t going to get to sleep through the night until she
hit middle school. Screw you, parenting manuals. I’m her
mommy.
At age two, Lizzy still needed me to stand by her crib
rubbing her back until she fell asleep -- a position that really did wonders
for my spine -- but both kids were, finally, sleeping through the night. Normally, that is. There were still nights when Lizzy had
nightmares. Screaming, shaking, terrible
nightmares. What horrors does someone
dream about, when they aren’t yet old enough for preschool, when the scariest
motion picture they’ve viewed involves Dora the Explorer, and when their
greatest accomplishment to date has been successful potty usage? Two-year-olds are not very good at describing
their dreams. Two-year-olds are not, in
fact, very good at knowing the difference between dreams and reality.
I had nightmares as a child, too. Vivid, awful, sweating nightmares from which
I had trouble waking myself. In
preschool, I dreamed again and again that there were monsters in the basement. They were lurking behind the dollhouse. They would come and get me, if I made even
the tiniest sound. They dined on
children, they had a particular appetite for chubby little three-year-olds, and
they were VERY HUNGRY. To this day, my
dreams are overly vivid. I refuse to
divulge any of them, lest Nurse Ratched takes it upon herself to medicate me –
but at least I now know that they are only dreams. Usually.
Ten o’clock at night. Eight years old. Wistfully, Lizzy
sighed, “I wish you could sleep in my bed with me.” She knows I’m not
going to, so this isn’t manipulation. It’s just… what she wishes –
fervently and wholeheartedly. One of the reasons that Lizzy adores
camping trips is that, although she has to leave behind her familiar bed, she
gets to sleep right next to us. Or, in the confines of a small tent,
sometimes partially on top of us, all friendly-like. Welcome to the
Grand Canyon! Your kids will be sleeping on your head for the next five
days! Have a great hike!
Everyone knows that lots of little kids will throw a
fit, demand a million stories, beg for water, and any number of other antics to
delay the final “good night”. Popular
wisdom also decrees that, duh, parents shouldn’t cater to this crap. But where is the line between what is crap
and what is genuine? When is a kid
demanding Mommy’s or Daddy’s attention in order to be a pain in the ass, and
when is does a kid really need that attention?
My parents will undoubtedly admit that I was always more of a
procrastinating, demanding whiner about bedtimes than Sarah was. But was that because I was an intrinsically
annoying little beast, or was it because Sarah always fell happily into
nightmare-free sleep in ten seconds flat?
Over the years, Jay and I have given a lot of ground, in
the name of sleep. I never meant to be one of those uber-lactaters whose
chunky toddlers stroll up and use full sentences to request a tasty warm
beverage straight from the source. Nonetheless, I nursed the twins at
bedtime and naptime until they were two and a half, not only because they were
really, really into it, but also because it was necessary for sleep. When
I finally weaned them, Molly grumbled a bit, but was assuaged with extra hugs
and kisses. Lizzy, however, needed her pacifier.
Binky didn’t go away until we hit the kids’ fifth
birthday, and Mommy and Daddy drew the line. I didn’t want to relive my
own humiliating confrontation with the dentist. I didn’t want to have a
kindergartener with a furtive collection of rubber nipples. Even then, it
was a miserable transition. It wasn’t that Lizzy didn’t understand.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want -- and try -- to be a Big Girl. But sleep
did not come easily – to put it mildly.
Sometimes she lay in bed, compliant but miserable, for more than two
hours before she finally conked out.
Could I blame her for calling me back every ten minutes to share, if
only a little, in her lonely ordeal?
Things got better.
Sleep arrived faster. Lizzy’s
nightmares have also become less traumatic, over the years. The
going-to-bed routine has become, bit by tiny bit, easier. Brush
teeth. Listen to a story. And, for the past couple of years, read a
story to yourself, too – but nothing too stressful. Nothing too
scary. No Roald Dahl, and DEFINITELY no Harry Potter. How about
some Beverly Cleary? Ribsy? Henry and the Paper Route? Good
choice, good choice. Snuggle down. Close your eyes.
Winnie the Pooh is right here. Sure, I’ll give you another kiss.
Yes, things improved.
But at age eight, there was another sleep transition to be
weathered. After five years of slumbering in a mini bunk bed designed to
fit the four-foot-long crib mattresses, it was time for the twins to move to
their Big Kid Loft. Poor Molly, the taller twin, had been complaining of
the cramped quarters for months. She was fully four inches longer than
her old mattress by the time Jay and I finally finished the new space and gave
her a bigger one. She moved into her new bed with joy and alacrity.
The other twin… not so much.
Five months later, itching to get rid of the lumbering
old bunks, Jay and I finally forced the issue. The resulting drama was
thick enough for an After School Special.
Four minutes after ten o’clock at night. “Lizzy,
we’re all here in the same cabin. We love you, kiddo. You’re
safe. You’re warm. You don’t need to feel lonely.”
“You get to have Daddy in your bed,” she
sighed.
“Well, but…” Parenting is full of these awesomely
terrible and potentially creepy conversational segues. How, I wondered,
do I argue that Mommy sleeping with Daddy is different from Lizzy sleeping with
– well, anyone?
Or… is it?
We humans are deeply, irrevocably, evolutionarily social
creatures. Lacking decent night vision –
not to mention any sort of useful claws, canine teeth, sprinting potential, or
armored hides -- we are pathetically vulnerable, especially at night. Even the most stalwart of caveman warriors,
armed with the most up-to-date flint spear, would have been jackal-meat on his
own. Not only did he need half a dozen
other warriors at this back, but maybe he also needed the sharp-eared teenager
to call the warning, the crone at the fire making sure it never went out, the grandfather
gently guarding a lap full of toddlers… and perhaps even the wide-eyed little
girl who just might be the first to spot some new danger.
I’m not going to sleep with my children, because it
doesn’t jive well with my 21st-century first-world lifestyle – but maybe
I’m swimming against the tide. Maybe I
have to admit that we’re not really hard-wired to sleep alone.
Lizzy was way ahead of me. She informed me that
when she’s grown up, and gets to choose everything for herself, she is going to
ALWAYS have someone else in her bed. Maybe several people.
“Well…
gosh. That sounds awfully… cozy, Lizzy.” I’m all in favor of you
making your own adult choices, even if they are, um, unusual. “Will Winnie the Pooh still be there,
too?”
“Yeah. Of
course he will.”
“I love you,
kiddo.” Really, you have no idea how much. “Sleep
tight. Sleep tight.”
And she did.
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