When she’s feeling sleepy, she pops her thumb in her mouth and closes her eyes. Sometimes I find her alseep, her thumb still extended but having slipped out of her mouth, looking very much like she’s hitch hiked her way into a dream.
After we’ve had a fight, she wants to cuddle up—not with me—but with Snakey-pie, one hand stroking his flaming velour, the other up to her mouth.
When she’s scared…say, a cow appears on the horizon…her thumb retreats to the safety of her mouth.
Sucking her thumb brings Sophie comfort. It helps her transition into sleep. It calms her down in the absence of the self control that she has yet to develop.
I made a conscious thumb-over-binky choice during Sophie’s early days of existence. Though binky-use has been correlated lower rates of SIDS, I favored the thumb because it was 1) always available (i.e., I wouldn’t have to wake in the middle of the night to retrieve a thumb from the corner of the crib), 2) free, 3) doesn’t impact speech clarity, 4) is an early strategy for self soothing that the child can regulate him/herself…a parent pops in a binky, but a baby determines when he/she wants to suck his/her thumb, 5) though a thumb can get dirty, it won’t fall on the floor in a public bathroom and pick up god-knows-what.
Three years later, I realize that thumb sucking may soon begin to affect the shape of her mouth, the price of continuing resulting in thousands of dollars worth of orthodontia. At Sophie’s first appointment with the dentist, I asked how much time I had. She said Sophia should really stop by three or four (I heard four)…and even now, it should be restricted to bedtime. My heart sank…how do I take it away? Or, even greater a challenge, how do I replace it?
I, personally, was not a thumb sucker. Nor did I have a binky. But I did share Sophie’s predilection for soft things. I would hold a silky smooth fabric to my mouth and rub it gently, back and forth, across my lips. My parents called me, “Blankey Sucker Movie Star,” but it was a bit of a misnomer as I was not a movie start and did not actually suck the blankey. Nevertheless, my underbite required years and years of pricey orthodontia—chin cups, head gear, braces, retainers, positioners. You name it, I wore it. All this is to say, there are no guarantees in life.
I maintained my habit until I turned 12, when Hankey Blankey mysteriously disappeared. I had a strong feeling that my parents had a ritual blanket-burning ceremony one night after I went to sleep. And though--to this day--they vehemently deny having done any such thing, I don’t think they believed throwing it out would have sufficed. I was too far gone. Had they simply thrown it out, I would have found it. They had to reduce it to ashes; eliminate it from existence. Make sure that there was no chance I would relapse.
There are still times when I wish I had my security blanket. Well into adulthood, I have privately lifted poor substitutes to my lips, hoping to feel that same sense of well-being and comfort. But it isn’t the same. Sometimes, I can fill the hole with other things…focusing my attention on those I love and by whom I am loved…but other times I just feel empty and raw.
I believe we need to treasure the things that bring us comfort. I watch so many people…children and adults…struggle to self sooth. Without a method, we worry, obsess, become enraged, get depressed, can’t sleep, drink, take drugs. Sophie has a practice guaranteed to mellow even the foulest of moods, send her into the sweetest of slumbers. I can’t help but wonder: if we all had some thumb sucking equivalent…would we be happier, better rested, calmer human beings?
Following this line of thinking, what right do I have, really, to make her stop?
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Nothing to Be Ashamed Of
Sometimes, the only way to reduce a stigma is to bulldoze over it, flattening it with personal experience and truth, encouraging others to come out and share their truths.
And so, I’m coming out of my personal bedroom tonight. My “personal bedroom” because it is mine and mine alone. Not mine and Kevin’s. And DEFINITELY not mine and Sophia’s. Just mine, all mine.
I wasn’t always comfortable with the fact that Kevin and I slept in separate spaces. In the beginning, when love was raw and young, I thought couples in love were SUPPOSED to sleep together. Wasn’t it an indicator of their level of intimacy? Of their willingness to share the most private parts of themselves? Of a desire to never be apart, even in sleep?
So when Kevin told me that he really had a hard time sleeping with me, that it made his poor sleep even worse, I took it very personally. I felt rejected and unloved. Why doesn’t he want to sleep with me? I wondered. But it wasn’t me. It was any living being who snored, changed positions or simply inhaled and exhaled, including our cat. So, when we first decided to cohabitate, we sought an apartment that had two bedrooms—one for Kevin and one for me.
In our first apartment together (the second floor of an aging, subdivided mansion that was once owned by one of the Johnsons of Johnson and Johnson), my room was grand and capacious with a windowed turret and a marble fireplace. The cat and I lived in fairytale splendor. Kevin slept in the adjacent room, an elongated closet, its windows packet tightly with egg crates and tapestries to block out every last photon. This was an arrangement I could live with, and did, for three years.
It got so, eventually, I couldn’t sleep with Kevin. When forced into a co-sleeping arrangement on a vacation or family visit, both of us would toss and turn with one of us inevitably winding up on the floor or in the bathtub or simply awake all night. Sleeping alone worked for us. And after awhile I came to realize that I actually preferred sleeping alone. I liked the silence. I liked the freedom of being able to keep the light on as long as I liked. I liked not sharing the covers. I liked not being woken by his alarm or when he got out of bed. Our time together is precious. And so is our time apart.
When Sophia was born, having two separate rooms served us well. I kept the baby with me, waking every two hours to feed her, and Kevin slept undisturbed in the room on the other side of our high-rise apartment. It allowed him to go to work each day and function. I had the luxury of staying at home and catching sleep when I could, he did not. But eventually, Sophia and I no longer made good bedfellows. It was time for both of us to have rooms of our own.
So, we went looking for a new domicile, one that had at least three bedrooms—one for each member of our family. We found an ideal situation that had a separate mother-in-law suite on the first floor and three bedrooms on the second. Kevin transformed the first-floor room into a light-proof, sound-proof cave. I claimed the master bedroom (along with the king-size bed and BOTH of the his and her closets), and Sophia landed in a sunny corner room that shares a wall with mine.
It wasn’t until I started showing people around the place that I realized there were those I could tell about our sleeping arrangements and those I actually felt ashamed to tell. Of course, most of my friends and family have known about it for years. But when it came to the babysitters, our new neighbors, gosh even the cable guy, I found myself leading them past “the computer room” or “the guest room,” but never “my husband’s room.”
Which got me thinking: What Sophia is going to tell her friends? Will our sleeping apart make her feel weird and different? Will she accept it as normal and be surprised to learn that her friends’ parents sleep together? Will she worry about the state of our marriage based on the status of our living arrangements? Will she campaign to “bring us back together?”
Will she lie, like I do?
Then I read “Do You Sleep with Your Spouse?” on The Motherlode, Lisa Belkin’s blog on the New York Times website in which she reflects upon the intersection between research and real-parenting. She wrote about the fact that more and more couples are sleeping apart…23% of all couples in 2005, up from 12% in 2001. Okay, not the majority, but a sizeable chunk of the population. She then cited studies on couples who sleep apart v. those who sleep together which yielded an unsurprising finding: those who sleep apart, sleep more soundly. What was most remarkable about the blog was not the facts and figures, but the response to it…parent after parent wishing he/she (mostly she) had a room of his/her own.
So, if I’m gossiped about or considered to be weird by Sophia’s friends’ mothers (which, I have to admit, is one of my fears) maybe, just maybe, those (imaginary) gossiping moms are envious.
And at the end of the day, what’s going to affect Sophia is not whether Kevin and I sleep apart, but how comfortable I am with the arrangement, how I communicate the reasons why we do it, and that I’m a refreshed, well-rested mom instead of a cranky, sleep-deprived one.
And so, I’m coming out of my personal bedroom tonight. My “personal bedroom” because it is mine and mine alone. Not mine and Kevin’s. And DEFINITELY not mine and Sophia’s. Just mine, all mine.
I wasn’t always comfortable with the fact that Kevin and I slept in separate spaces. In the beginning, when love was raw and young, I thought couples in love were SUPPOSED to sleep together. Wasn’t it an indicator of their level of intimacy? Of their willingness to share the most private parts of themselves? Of a desire to never be apart, even in sleep?
So when Kevin told me that he really had a hard time sleeping with me, that it made his poor sleep even worse, I took it very personally. I felt rejected and unloved. Why doesn’t he want to sleep with me? I wondered. But it wasn’t me. It was any living being who snored, changed positions or simply inhaled and exhaled, including our cat. So, when we first decided to cohabitate, we sought an apartment that had two bedrooms—one for Kevin and one for me.
In our first apartment together (the second floor of an aging, subdivided mansion that was once owned by one of the Johnsons of Johnson and Johnson), my room was grand and capacious with a windowed turret and a marble fireplace. The cat and I lived in fairytale splendor. Kevin slept in the adjacent room, an elongated closet, its windows packet tightly with egg crates and tapestries to block out every last photon. This was an arrangement I could live with, and did, for three years.
It got so, eventually, I couldn’t sleep with Kevin. When forced into a co-sleeping arrangement on a vacation or family visit, both of us would toss and turn with one of us inevitably winding up on the floor or in the bathtub or simply awake all night. Sleeping alone worked for us. And after awhile I came to realize that I actually preferred sleeping alone. I liked the silence. I liked the freedom of being able to keep the light on as long as I liked. I liked not sharing the covers. I liked not being woken by his alarm or when he got out of bed. Our time together is precious. And so is our time apart.
When Sophia was born, having two separate rooms served us well. I kept the baby with me, waking every two hours to feed her, and Kevin slept undisturbed in the room on the other side of our high-rise apartment. It allowed him to go to work each day and function. I had the luxury of staying at home and catching sleep when I could, he did not. But eventually, Sophia and I no longer made good bedfellows. It was time for both of us to have rooms of our own.
So, we went looking for a new domicile, one that had at least three bedrooms—one for each member of our family. We found an ideal situation that had a separate mother-in-law suite on the first floor and three bedrooms on the second. Kevin transformed the first-floor room into a light-proof, sound-proof cave. I claimed the master bedroom (along with the king-size bed and BOTH of the his and her closets), and Sophia landed in a sunny corner room that shares a wall with mine.
It wasn’t until I started showing people around the place that I realized there were those I could tell about our sleeping arrangements and those I actually felt ashamed to tell. Of course, most of my friends and family have known about it for years. But when it came to the babysitters, our new neighbors, gosh even the cable guy, I found myself leading them past “the computer room” or “the guest room,” but never “my husband’s room.”
Which got me thinking: What Sophia is going to tell her friends? Will our sleeping apart make her feel weird and different? Will she accept it as normal and be surprised to learn that her friends’ parents sleep together? Will she worry about the state of our marriage based on the status of our living arrangements? Will she campaign to “bring us back together?”
Will she lie, like I do?
Then I read “Do You Sleep with Your Spouse?” on The Motherlode, Lisa Belkin’s blog on the New York Times website in which she reflects upon the intersection between research and real-parenting. She wrote about the fact that more and more couples are sleeping apart…23% of all couples in 2005, up from 12% in 2001. Okay, not the majority, but a sizeable chunk of the population. She then cited studies on couples who sleep apart v. those who sleep together which yielded an unsurprising finding: those who sleep apart, sleep more soundly. What was most remarkable about the blog was not the facts and figures, but the response to it…parent after parent wishing he/she (mostly she) had a room of his/her own.
So, if I’m gossiped about or considered to be weird by Sophia’s friends’ mothers (which, I have to admit, is one of my fears) maybe, just maybe, those (imaginary) gossiping moms are envious.
And at the end of the day, what’s going to affect Sophia is not whether Kevin and I sleep apart, but how comfortable I am with the arrangement, how I communicate the reasons why we do it, and that I’m a refreshed, well-rested mom instead of a cranky, sleep-deprived one.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
I Walk the Line
Any parenting book will tell you, a toddler’s cry in the middle of the night can mean one of a jillion things:
- Teething
- An ear infection (or other illness)
- A nightmare/night terror
- Normal sleep cycle waking coupled with an inability to self soothe back to sleep
- A painful encounter with a bed rail
- A lost toy, blankie, pacifier, etc.
- Fear of the dark
- A dirty diaper
- Stressful events (a new home, a new room, family discord)
- The realization that his/her parents are doing something much more fun than sleeping
Etc.
It follows that how one reacts to mid-night wails very much depends on what’s going on.
For example: If Sophie’s got a dirty diaper, I’m going to go in and change it. If she’s got an ear infection, I’ll give her medicine and love. But, if she simply wants out of the crib, I’m going to stuff ear plugs in my ears and do my best to ignore the cries.
The problem is, I often don’t know which it is until I run down the possibilities (e.g., go in and sniff her bottom, feel her forehead, scan the floor for members of her stuffed animal menagerie, etc.) which means going in.
I’ve always been wary of going in. It’s the behaviorist in me. A little voice inside my head says, you go in once and the behavior will escalate. Don’t reinforce! Let her cry it out! Give her an inch she’ll take a yard!
But buried under my training exists my instincts. Weak and muted they plead: “She needs you. Wasn’t it reassuring when your parents responded to your cries? What does it cost you to go in there?”
And there is the physical pain of listening to your child suffer—like the blood being wrung out of your heart.
So, about a week ago, when Sophie started waking in the middle of the night—my heart and mind fought a fierce battle over what to do.
Day One
The first time I went to her. She stood in the corner of her crib, real tears streaming down her face, hair damp and matted to her cheeks. Baby in one arm, bear in the other. “Mama! Out! Out!” she cried. I lifted her and felt her body shaking in my arms. She threw her little arms around my neck and burrowed into me.
Are you scared? I asked.
Yeah, responded Sophie.
Did you have a bad dream? I wondered.
Yeah, replied Sophie.
Are you an apple pie? I tested.
Yeah, affirmed Sophie.
I was not going to find out what was wrong. At least not by asking her. Within a minute or two, her body grew limp in my arms.
“Bed,” she told me. So I laid her in her crib, sang a made-up lull-a-bye, and backed out the door. She fell back asleep
She woke an hour later. This time I decided to wait out the screams. She’d cry out, five minutes would pass quietly, and then she’d cry out again. Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Two hours. There was no sign of her stopping. I moved to the attic where I could no longer hear her and slept for two hours. When I came back down, she was fast asleep…but at what cost? How long did scream and sob until she finally passed out? O, the guilt.
Day Two
She slept like a (proverbial) baby.
Day Three
On the third night, she was up at midnight again, wailing. I went in, held her a minute or two until she asked for “nap,” and put her back in her crib. I felt relieved. It seemed like the right decision. She slept through the night. I thought to myself, perhaps one size does not fit all…maybe this is what Sophie needs.
Day Four
Wrong. She first woke at a quarter till midnight. I comforted her; she fell back asleep. And hour later she woke again. I comforted her; she fell back asleep. When she woke for the third time, an hour later, I started to feel like I was getting played. I resisted going in, and she fell back asleep after ten minutes.
But…the next day Sophie was listless, ate poorly, and tugged at her ear. O, the guilt. I called the doctor and made an appointment for the following day.
Day Five
Sophie woke only once, cried for five minutes, and resettled herself. Later that morning, the doctor peered in her ears and down her throat, and concluded, “She’s fine.”
“Then I AM getting played?” I asked.
“Well, its possible she has a virus that’s making her uncomfortable. I’d give it seven days. If she’s still waking…THEN you’re getting played.”
“Seven days from today?” Kevin asked,” or from when it started?”
“When it started,” replied the doctor, raising an eyebrow.
So now Sophia has two days left of 24-hour full-mom access. After that…it’s tough love, ear plugs, a bloodless heart and a well-rested mom. Some days, it seems that parenting is a constant struggle to find and walk the line between indulgence and neglect.
Monday, May 18, 2009
In Transition
I can’t relate. I’ve never been a napper. If I allow myself the luxury of some afternoon reverie…I pay for it later on in wide-eyed insomnia. And I could never do 20-minute power naps. If I fall asleep in the afternoon, I go deep, my brainwaves slowing to a standstill. And when I finally rise, I’m groggy, disoriented, and cranky as hell. So, no napping, unless circumstances are dire.
Kevin and Sophia, on the other hand, both relish their naps. Kevin, who is utterly incapable of nocturnal sleep, seems to have little problem dozing once the sun breaks through the horizon. And Sophia has been known to beg for a nap when we have kept her up longer than three hours at a pop, reaching out for her crib as we carried her towards it, plugging her mouth with her thumb and assuming the head down, butt up position.
But now, at 18 months, Sophia is beginning to consolidate her naps, meaning the two hour-long baby-free periods I had each day are collapsing into one fitful siesta of indeterminate length. Everyone tells me this is better—that you can get more accomplished…and enjoy more of your baby during your wakeful time. I’m sure that one day this will be true, but right now we are in that no-man’s-land where two naps are too many and one is not enough. My formerly sweet, docile child is more like…well…me after a nap. Cranky. Clumsy. And wanting to be held.
And if it isn’t enough that Sophia's mood is darker, her poverty of sleep during the day is now affecting her sleep at night. As Kevin always says (and is living proof of this axiom), bad sleep gets bad sleep. And so, we are back to crying it out. Only this time, she’s more tenacious and more aware than ever before. She cries with the confidence that we are partying downstairs…without her. We sealed the crack under her door with a stuffed snake to muffle the sounds of us having a wild time washing the dishes, living it up sorting the laundry, and rocking out while we recycle.
On the first eve of the one-nap days, she roared her terrible roars for a good 45 minutes. Kevin, sick of watching me cringe, decided he would go to her. I heard him through the monitor say, “Oh you made a poo,” and Sophie sniveling, “Poo! Poo!” We felt badly that we had let her go on for so long when clearly the poo was the issue, but we were relieved that there was something wrong—and that she wasn’t regressing to her infant ways. But later that night…around 3 am…I heard a tiny voice call out, “Poo Mama, Poo!” And, though I knew I was being had, I felt compelled to check.
Sure enough, no poo.
So now, Sophia has become the girl that cried poo. And sometimes there is a poo. And sometimes there’s not. Either way, neither one of us is getting much sleep these days. I know, like all things, this too will pass. But I feared that if I didn’t write about it, this would be the sort of memory that fades with time. The quotidian disturbances that mean so much to us in the moment, that stress us out, that we rant to our friends about, but that leave no permanent markings. We are always in transition, always moving on to the next thing. "Everything becomes something else and slips away (e.e. cummings)." But this moment, even this moment, is precious.
Kevin and Sophia, on the other hand, both relish their naps. Kevin, who is utterly incapable of nocturnal sleep, seems to have little problem dozing once the sun breaks through the horizon. And Sophia has been known to beg for a nap when we have kept her up longer than three hours at a pop, reaching out for her crib as we carried her towards it, plugging her mouth with her thumb and assuming the head down, butt up position.
But now, at 18 months, Sophia is beginning to consolidate her naps, meaning the two hour-long baby-free periods I had each day are collapsing into one fitful siesta of indeterminate length. Everyone tells me this is better—that you can get more accomplished…and enjoy more of your baby during your wakeful time. I’m sure that one day this will be true, but right now we are in that no-man’s-land where two naps are too many and one is not enough. My formerly sweet, docile child is more like…well…me after a nap. Cranky. Clumsy. And wanting to be held.
And if it isn’t enough that Sophia's mood is darker, her poverty of sleep during the day is now affecting her sleep at night. As Kevin always says (and is living proof of this axiom), bad sleep gets bad sleep. And so, we are back to crying it out. Only this time, she’s more tenacious and more aware than ever before. She cries with the confidence that we are partying downstairs…without her. We sealed the crack under her door with a stuffed snake to muffle the sounds of us having a wild time washing the dishes, living it up sorting the laundry, and rocking out while we recycle.
On the first eve of the one-nap days, she roared her terrible roars for a good 45 minutes. Kevin, sick of watching me cringe, decided he would go to her. I heard him through the monitor say, “Oh you made a poo,” and Sophie sniveling, “Poo! Poo!” We felt badly that we had let her go on for so long when clearly the poo was the issue, but we were relieved that there was something wrong—and that she wasn’t regressing to her infant ways. But later that night…around 3 am…I heard a tiny voice call out, “Poo Mama, Poo!” And, though I knew I was being had, I felt compelled to check.
Sure enough, no poo.
So now, Sophia has become the girl that cried poo. And sometimes there is a poo. And sometimes there’s not. Either way, neither one of us is getting much sleep these days. I know, like all things, this too will pass. But I feared that if I didn’t write about it, this would be the sort of memory that fades with time. The quotidian disturbances that mean so much to us in the moment, that stress us out, that we rant to our friends about, but that leave no permanent markings. We are always in transition, always moving on to the next thing. "Everything becomes something else and slips away (e.e. cummings)." But this moment, even this moment, is precious.
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