By Amy Julia Becker
New York Times
May 6, 2011
Our middle child, William, had trouble sleeping as a newborn. And as an infant. And really up until he was eight months old. He fussed. He squirmed. He screamed. The slightest noise jolted him awake. Sunlight caused distress. During the day, he invariably woke up after a 40-minute nap. During the night, he required rocking and swaddling and shushing. He nursed every two to three hours.
It wasn’t because I didn’t try hard. I read half a dozen books on sleep and tried to adapt them to William’s needs. I modified my diet in case something I was eating made him uncomfortable. I set a consistent bedtime and morning wake up. I fed him on a schedule. I tried letting him cry it out, and he simply cried. For an hour. Night after night after night. And when I had tried it all and he still wouldn’t sleep, I berated myself for what I thought was my failure as a mother.
In the midst of my angst, I spoke with a friend who had three kids of her own. “I just need to figure it out,” I said, as if my son were a problem to be solved.
Her voice was gentle when she replied, “You never really figure it out. You just get through it.”
Until William, I thought I did have “it” completely figured out. That’s because William’s older sister Penny had slept through the night (10 hours) when she was seven weeks old. Back then I thought she slept so well because I was a good mother and because she was a good baby. When other parents confided that they were still nursing at 1 a.m. with a six-month old, or that their 11-month-old woke them up crying in the wee hours of the morning, or that their toddler called out for water and they responded with a sippy cup, I felt like rolling my eyes. I thought Penny’s sleep habits came because I had played by a set of simple rules and she obeyed. I thought they came because I did it right.
Our third child, Marilee, is now 11 weeks old. She’s sleeping just fine. If Penny was a dream and William was a nightmare, Marilee is right in the middle. But I know now that her sleep says very little about our abilities as parents or her character as a child. I’m more confident with her than I was with Penny and William, so I don’t second guess myself about letting her sleep in her car seat or waking her up during the day if we need to go somewhere as a family. I don’t chastise myself that some nights she falls asleep at 7 and others at 10. I don’t worry about what time she wakes up in the morning. I’m more confident, but less proud.
Over the years I’ve learned some practical things about sleep, but what I’ve really figured out is that teaching my children to sleep isn’t a litmus test for good babies or good mothering. Rather, teaching them to sleep is about establishing a relationship of care even when it is exhausting and difficult and I worry that it will never end. It is about sacrificing my desire to get back to “normal” life and relinquishing my hopes to conform my children to a set of rules I read in a book. Teaching them to sleep is about treating my children as individuals and trusting my instincts about when to hold and when to let them cry, when to wake them up and when to let the nap continue.
I feel a surge of gratitude when I look in on my children fast asleep. Penny, with her arms splayed, as if to embrace the universe … William, curled on his side and cuddling his giraffes … Marilee, swaddled tight with only her round face in view … And yet learning how to care for them comes when they are not nearly so adorable. It comes when I am willing to offer myself as a calming presence, willing to sing one more lullaby or change one more diaper or kiss a forehead one more time. Love is not an emotion so much as it is a series of actions.
Actively caring for my children has taken away the self-imposed pressure to pass a cosmic parenting exam. And it has translated into gentleness with myself when I need a nap, compassion for my friends when they groan about their own sleepless nights, patience with our kids when they wake me up one more time, and gratitude for my husband when he takes the 4 a.m. shift. Moreover, I trust that these moments are preparing me for the years ahead, when yet again I will realize that raising my children has less to do with getting it right and more to do with loving them well.
