Sleep: A Method

Do not be fooled by this peaceful facade.

Well, dear readers, there comes a time when I ask my children to stop waking me up to nurse every 20 to 45 to 60 to 90 minutes throughout the night, every damn night. After thirteen months (in Lander’s case) to fourteen months (in Finn’s case) of such shenanigans, I have tended to reach a point where the old headlights can no longer pierce through the thick fog of sleep deprivation.

Have you ever tried to drive through fog? Admit it, people, you all have tried driving through fog, unless you don’t have a car and/or driver’s license. So you all know that it is, in fact, REALLY HARD, and can be rather terrifying at times. Things seem to come at you from out of nowhere: other cars, giant trucks, moose, guard rails, trees, hopping toads. And they scare the shit out of you. Every last one. And sleep deprivation is EXACTLY LIKE THIS.

Some of you are saying, WTF? Why did you allow this to go on for so long? Well, readers, it is because Amos and I have soft, warm, loving hearts, unlike you, who obviously are cold, cruel, calculating villains, plotting against your own children just so you can selfishly have a bit of sleep. Yes, you. You know who I’m talking about! You selfish people. All of you!

Our half-hearted (and occasionally full-hearted) attempts at “sleep training” have traditionally gone something like this:

With both babies, I started with subtle hints. “Hey, um, would you mind not waking me up so much tonight? I’m kind of tired. Heh heh heh heh heh heh, uuuuuuhhhhh, oh god, please let me sleep for longer than a two-hour stretch tonight.” and “Heyyyyy, look at this crib, maybe you should try sleeping in it! Wouldn’t it be funny if you slept in it ALL NIGHT?? FOR MORE THAN TWO HOURS???”

So, surprisingly, the subtle hints didn’t work — not at all — despite the cute little anecdote (the “hey, little baby, mama needs more sleep” talk) in the Dr. Sears Baby Sleep Book that suggested it may. And I must say, when you have achieved a certain level of sleep deprivation, you start to hate all of those people and their stinking anecdotes about how they gently got their babies to sleep. Just try talking to my fist, Dr. Sears, and all you others as well! (Just kidding — I actually mostly like you.)

But I digress.

“What is the purpose of this discussion?” you may be asking. Well, dear readers, I am here to share with you the secrets of my patented baby sleep training technique. Behold:

1. Baby goes to sleep in his crib. This takes some convincing, especially since baby has spent more than a year of nights sleeping wedged up into my armpit, periodically (every 45 minutes, actually) sucking the sweet milk out of my breasts like a soda fountain from heaven — but eventually he gets so tired from all the crying that he just says To Hell With This Shit and falls asleep in the stinking crib. While I stand there in the dark, bent over the crib with my hand on his belly for an hour. No, no, it’s okay — I do it for him. One day I will merely have to stand there for forty-five minutes with my hands in my pockets, and then I will progress to sitting there for forty five minutes until he is asleep enough to not pop up when I open the door to leave the room. Ideally. At this stage, I’m always sure that this is how it will play out.
2. Baby wakes up two hours later and screams bloody hell. Because the sound of his angry yells is something akin to feedback through a fully cranked up amplifier, I do what I need to do to hush him, as soon as possible. This used to involve me whisking him out of his crib into our bed and snuggling him up with my breast as he nursed himself back to sleep. Now it involves me whisking him into our bed and telling him that it is time to sleep, no sweet delicious milk fountain until morning — I MEAN IT!! This time, I really do!! And then he calms down and playfully body slams/ unintentionally head butts me while I lie there, prostrate, for the next two hours because he thinks it’s funny. I tell him it’s not funny but he keeps doing it anyway.
3. Once he is asleep, I do not move. I repeat, I do not move, ever. Even if my baby is sleeping on my head, filling my nostrils with the warm smell of wet diaper (this is, oddly, kind of comforting — i think it hearkens back to the days of being apes who sleep in pee-moistened nests), I absolutely do not wake him. Because then the screaming and/or wrestling match will begin again, and he will head butt me again, and again, and again. Oh, wait, he always wakes up after 45 minutes wanting to nurse again. So really, nothing to worry about!
4. The next morning, I buy — no, INVEST IN — a mannequin or dummy. When the first wake up of the night happens, I bring the dummy into the bedroom and prop it up beside the crib and bend it over so its hand is touching baby’s back/belly as he goes to sleep. This business of making the dummy’s arm motions look convincingly human takes some practice. I have put much effort into trying to make MYSELF and my OWN movements look more like the dummy during the daytime, so it isn’t so hard to convince the baby that the dummy is me in the middle of the night.
5. Make a recording of myself saying “shhh, shhh, nighty night, baby, shhh shhh shhh,” over and over again, for 45 minutes. Once I have the dummy set up, then it’s time for the tape. Yes, this is done with a tape recorder from the nineties.
6. Crawl out the door like a commando while the dummy stands next to the crib and the tape plays, staying low enough to the ground so baby doesn’t see me and become suspicious of the dummy. Success depends entirely upon the plausibility of the dummy. Baby must not become suspicious.
7. Okay, the dummy part is fake, but you would be surprised at how much time I’ve spent turning this scheme over and over in my mind, for real, wondering if I could make it work. And I think Dr. Sears came up with the idea of playing a tape — I can’t remember exactly, and I’m too tired to track it down because I don’t ever get any fucking sleep. Well done, Dr. Sears, or whoever shared that little tidbit, well done. (Slow, sarcastic clapping here).

Please, dear readers, do let me know how this method works for you.

Signing off,

Kara