The Day I Gave Up

I don't remember what day it was, exactly. But I remember it. It was the day I said, "Let's sell the crib. We'll put his mattress on the floor." It was the day I gave up.

And it was glorious freedom.

I don't know whether you remember, but I spent a lot of Mal's first, oh, six months complaining about his sleep/lack of sleep habits.

When I brought him to bed with me the first week or so he was home, I never ever would have dreamed that we'd get almost a year under our belts and he'd still be here.

When he was two months old, if I'd known this, I would have lost it. Lost. It.

But now it's different. Why? Because I gave up.

Understand this: My son is coming up on 10 months old, and he has never once "just" fallen to sleep. That magic "drowsy but not yet asleep" doesn't happen to him, except when he's in the car or bike seats. So I've never been able to just lay him down and have him drift off to sleep. Even crying, he's only fallen to sleep once, back in early February.

So that hasn't changed.

Nope, but I have.

When Mal was a couple of months old, it started bothering me that I didn't get any time to myself in bed. I started asking around and a lot of people who also co-sleep said that they put their baby in a bassinet or crib at first, then move them into bed when the baby wakes to nurse.

I tried that, and it sort of worked. Mal would often wake up when moving from my arms to the bed, but usually after a few tries, I could get him to stay in bed... for anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of hours. It was usually closer to 15 minutes, and I never actually fell asleep or really rested; I was too on edge expecting him to wake up.

What was worse is that, after a month or so, he just would not tolerate the move from my holding him to going into the crib. I would spend easily half an hour to an hour each night, standing beside his crib, swaying, trying to discern the perfect time (his sleep level, my ability to bend over and deftly place him) to drop him into his bed, but he'd wake up. We even pre-warmed his bed by putting an electric heat pad in there before trying to move him.

One night, I tried and started bawling after the fourth time he woke up. I calmed myself down and tried a fifth time, and fuh-reaked out when he woke up again. I mean, whisper screaming to James, "What am I doing wrong?! What am I doing wrong?" between very colorful swear words and pounding my own bed with my fists in absolute desperation.

I felt angry. Was I angry with my baby? I couldn't be! He wasn't doing anything "wrong." Except he wasn't meeting my expectations, and I was on edge.

That particular night, I made the limit of two times. If he woke up two times, I'd give up and he'd come to bed with me. And it happened more often than not, which made me feel like a failure. I still wasn't doing "it" right, whatever "it" was.

After a while, I stopped trying to put him in the crib at all, because I thought I was too tired to deal with it. As it turned out, that was the right thing.

Here's what I slowly realized: This boy cannot sleep on his own. He just can't. There's no way to "train" him to do something his body doesn't have the ability to do.

So I gave up.

I reluctantly embraced our reality, and found that life is a lot easier when you go with the flow instead of trying to fight it. We even bought a king sized bed when we moved, and that's been a huge bonus! We actually have room to wrestle it out (literally; Mal is very active when he semi-wakes between sleep cycles) without messing too much with James' sleep.

He is getting better and easier about some sleep things: We typically have two pretty reliable naps per day. There is one in the morning, between about 9 and 11:30, that lasts an hour. Then there is another one sometime between 1:30 and 4:30 that lasts an hour or two.

Mostly, Mal naps on the couch. But he's slept on his floor mattress at least half a dozen times, which is half a dozen more than he slept in it when it was part of a crib.

What I've learned from watching his naps is the fact that once he reaches a certain level of wakefulness, he literally cannot put himself back to sleep. Even if he's still sleepy. Even if staying awake means he'll be fussy and crying. It doesn't matter. I have to help him get back to sleep, even during the day.

Eventually, Mal will sleep through the night, or at least big chunks of it. Eventually, he'll sleep in another room, in his own bed. Apparently, eventually, one day I will miss this time of familial closeness. I can't imagine that, but I also can't imagine going back to the stress of trying to shove a giant square peg into the eye of a needle (appropriately mixing metaphors there).

Giving up was the best thing I could have done for my son.

From May 2015

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