ON SLEEPING (ON NOT SLEEPING)

This post is sponsored by Disney Baby. I'll be joining the Disney Baby blogging team next month, and look forward to sharing these kinds of stories (projects/ideas/etc) with you over there! Stay tuned for more details!

i was told during my first week of motherhood that huck's first six weeks would be our hardest. he'd have no idea that night was for sleeping, he'd be taking two-hour naps on a constant rotation, and he'd likely suffer from, for lack of a better term, "infant ennui," when baby is upset because, well, who knows why? because the world is noisy and air is not nearly as comfortable as amniotic fluid and digesting all that food is really really hard, probably. but i was ready for it. and when he wailed a few nights between midnight and two a.m., i sort of felt like i understood where he was coming from. so i patiently shushed and rocked and swaddled him and, okay, i panicked too, but only just a little bit. 

right around four weeks he started to come around to his circadian rhythm and everything settled. i figured we had it made. i was still losing buckets of water weight and having to pee every 20 minutes, so when he'd wake at night to eat i'd unwrap him like a little present, change his diaper (always diaper first, before he had the chance to get drowsy from milk), nurse till he pulled off, swaddle him up tight, give him a little kiss on his forehead and lay him back in his crib, and then i'd book it like mad to the bathroom, because shoot. sooo much water weight. by the time i'd come back from the bathroom he'd have finished fussing and managed to find sleep again. success and hurrah and all that. my good little sleeper! 

after about six weeks, i stopped having to use the restroom all night long. and his little cries so close to my ears made my heart ache. i started wondering why he wasn't sleeping anymore? what happened? (in retrospect, if i had just realized that i was in the bathroom before when he fussed and thus hadn't heard it, and that he was fully capable of figuring it out and going back to sleep, i probably could have been patient and let him fuss a bit. or maybe not? who knows? (btw that "french pause" they talk about in bringing up bebe is real. it's really real. next time, i'm remembering this.))

so i bought a sleep book. and that book. oh that book gave me hives. i wanted to unread it the second i read it. but i gave it my best shot. i was careful not to let huck fall asleep in my arms, lest he never learn to fall asleep on his own. i was careful not to let him sleep too long, or at the wrong times, just like i was told. i put him down early, when he was supposed to be just barely tired, even though i felt like it wasn't what he really needed. it was just a mess. it went against every instinct i had. so, finally, i tossed it out.

and so it came to pass that at five months we discovered stroller sleep. oh, stroller sleep! huck slept like a champion in that stroller, for hours and hours and hours. at nine months it became carseat sleep. just as effective, and takes up less space! then, on his cue, we started co-sleeping. i have never slept so well in my life! i was like, yes! but also: vague sense of mom guilt. because, shouldn't he be sleeping in his crib? shouldn't i be teaching him to sleep? what was i doing wrong? does this count? was i screwing him up? this can't count! i'm a horrible mother!!!!!! 

right. that thought pattern right there? is STUPID. i look back at myself and i go, you idiot. what a waste. oh what i wouldn't give to have more time with a sleeping huck heavy on my chest.

even while huck and i were getting the best sleep of our lives, i kept sabotaging it by trying to trick him into sleeping in his crib. all he really wanted was mom's arms, mom's milk, a gently rocking stroller, or a cozy carseat, but i was adamant that i had to do it "right." i mean, the benefit of stroller sleep is... they sleep in their stroller! whenever they need to! and it was such a blessing that huck could nap on the go or while on vacation (easily keeping some sense of routine), and while we're at it, strollers are pretty pricey, so it was nice to get our money's worth, but try telling that to me last year and i would have looked at you like you were crazy. or just being nice but secretly judging me.

the week after huck's first birthday we moved to a new apartment, where had his own walk in closet bedroom. we decided to let him cry it out. it felt like it was time, and he was ready. it took two weeks of huck shouting at us stubbornly before he would fall asleep willingly in his crib, but he figured it out. it was a huge battle of the wills. (he was mad, not scared or sad, and so it was easier for me to hear him cry than when he was 4 months old and the doctor told me it was time to sleep train. the few nights we tried it then made me feel so sick). he slept in his crib like a champion until we went to portland on an extended vacation, and then we started co-sleeping again, which worked great until it didn't, so we held a mini sleep training session (two nights was all it took), and now he's back in his crib. i'm sure we'll go through many other variations on sleeping before he's got it all straightened out for good. and i've decided to believe there is nothing wrong with that at all.

the next time i do this, i'm following my instincts from day one. maybe our next baby will be like huck, or maybe our next baby will need the structure that huck so ardently resisted. either way: more listening to babies, less listening to shoulds. more flexibility, and a whole lot less panic.  

but mostly, a whole lot more of this:

because a sleeping baby on your chest is the best kind of drug.

way better than a sleeping baby in a crib.   

......  sometimes. ;)

next time on disney baby:

on letting dads be dads.