Get On Board the Sleep Train

So! The first frenetic newborn months have finally passed and life has finally resumed something of a routine, the baby is still a baby but she's now four months old, and is smiling, babbling, cooing, rolling over on occasion - most of which first happened while I was out of town on business, natch - and it has finally come time for sleep training.

For those who aren't yet or aren't about to become parents - number one, you've got better things to read, likely on Pinterest, but two, sleep training is, well, like any kind of training, you're learning how to do something. Now, it may seem weird, the idea that one must learn to sleep, but there it is, the idea that collapsing in a supine position to become totally vulnerable to the world whilst you saw logs takes learning and practice the way a ninja must learn ninjitsu - kinda. You gotta assassinate those bags under your eyes?

Anyway, for the past four months, or third of a year, so we make sure we have a little perspective, we've been helping our little girl go to sleep, shushing, bouncing, swaddling, swaying, hugging, patting, rocking, etc. etc., so now her sleep-muscles are as undeveloped as her neck muscles were before we started militarizing tummy-time ("you drop and give me 2 more minutes on your tummy, soldier! Stare at yourself in the mirror and smile, goddam it!"). But we've finally come to the conclusion that she needs to learn how to sleep on her own, in her own room.

Crunchy granola types (my people) may suggest that having a child learn to sleep, through the tears earned through training, is cruel and that these beautiful, delicate beings should sleep for as many years as they want, nestled in the warm bosom of their attached parents, secure in the belief that there is always a space for them in their mother and father's hearts and bed. But I say nuts to that - nuts to that idea because I'm someone who never learnt to sleep. For as long as I can remember, I've had difficulty sleeping, and perhaps some of that problem is dispositional, but maybe, maybe if my parents had trained me in the morphic arts I would be a better sleeper now, instead of someone who spent eight of his adult years sleeping on a couch because the bed meant insomnia.

So we've concluded that our baby needs to learn how to fall asleep on her own. But how? There are a gajillion baby books, subdivided into a bazillion baby sleep books. Our, or at least my, conclusion was that in many ways it didn't matter which method or technique or style ("watch my uncanny five-toed sloth-style sleep technique!" spoken in mismatched dubbing), but most important would be that we did something as loving parents, and were consistent.

We'd already decided that simply leaving the baby in her room to cry by herself wasn't us, the equivalent of water-boarding a precious child to sleep. But it seemed that there would by needs be some amount of crying involved. Every time during the day we'd see her gummy smile light up over the past couple of weeks that we'd been discussing our approach, clouded by our fevered imaginations of our precious child weeping, unconsoled, behind the imprisoning bars of her crib, we'd immediately begin having second thoughts, concluding that perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if we all co-slept in a family bed until she was 21 or maybe 50, we'd just need to get something bigger than our full. (Okay, joke - we have a queen. But something much, much bigger.) So after reading much Anne Lamott for courage (and yes, I'm the father in this relationship, just like the blog's title says, and yes, I read and love Anne Lamott) and a few baby sleep books for ideas, tonight we've finally embarked on our sleep train.

After I made an actually very excellent butternut squash soup for dinner (please see the note about Anne Lamott above), we started the baby's bedtime routine with a bath, change of clothes, cuddle, story, prayer of thanks, and then World War III.

I put her in the crib, stroked and kissed her (actually, given the scratchiness of my 'stache, perhaps that wasn't the most soothing thing to do), and then walked out of her life forever, or at least that's what it sounded like I was doing to her little tiny four and a half month old soul. My poor wife was bunkered down in our room with headphones on trying to drown out the cries of our infant with Soul Asylum - perhaps Elliott Smith would have been more appropriate, I'll have to suggest that to her for tomorrow night. The baby cried, she wept, she wailed, she gnashed her gums and would have rent her garments if the velcro hadn't made that particular move less dramatic, hey, perhaps that's what professional mourners should do, use pre-rent, velcroed garments for effect, like grief-stricken strippers, oh Marvin, why'dja leave me, riiiiip!!

I sat in the next room, sipping beer and watching the timer count down while reading and re-reading the chapter on what the hell I was supposed to do next, because in the moment, in the panic, nothing seemed to make sense.

Now, I've done enough stuff that's required endurance that I've been able to observe it a bit. Time doesn't want to go on, it just kinda parks there, whether you're running a marathon or watching your wife in labor or you're a child again and it's the middle of the night and your adulterous father isn't coming home even though you're sitting on the curb and waiting for the lights of his car to come up the street, and that time'll keep going, and then the point will come where you don't think you can take it any more and then that point kinda sails by, and then you write about it, minutes, hours, days, years later, because it's over, only it's not, the thing is over but your life and what happened is never over because it's a part of who you are.

But I knew my baby-cakes was a tough girl, and even though it took her 57 minutes tonight, I knew in my heart of hearts that she was strong enough to do it, strong enough to fall asleep, and she did.

'RENTSTERS

My wife turns to me while we walk, side by each, fall leaves crunching under our sandals, and comments, "we were totally in to 21 Jump Street before any one else!"  She pauses, snorts a half laugh with the realization, saying, "'we were in to it before any one else' - what are we, hipsters?"

I stop in my tracks.  "Honey - we just went to a farmer's market.  And then to a bar.  With our baby.  I have facial hair.  We're carrying a case of PBR home right now.  I think the least of our worries is whether we liked an 80's t.v. show before anyone else."

She looks at askance;  "I meant 21 Jump Street, the movie."

"Oh."  That's all I can manage.  We start walking again.  The case of Pabst is getting heavy.

BEAUTIFUL SLUMBER

People have in mind this idea that "sleeping like a baby" is the highest level of somno-mastery;  it's this almost hindu-buddhist notion that the best sleep requires you to return to the beginning of your developmental abilities, you return to your origin to become the best at something.

However, people are clearly talking out of their necks when they say that sleeping like a baby is so peaceful because they neglect to mention that sleeping infants sound weird, not only do they sound weird, they sound somehow menacing and terrifying.

Never mind that for almost the first trimester of life outside of the womb you'll panic every night at the weird sounds your sleeping baby makes, and then panic when she stops making them, worried sick that she isn't, or perhaps is, breathing, enough so that fathers have gone to technologically absurd lengths to find peace of mind about their breathing, or unbreathing, child (like a new parent's version of quantum entanglement with a new but somehow ancient Schrodinger's cat of neonatal apnea) - the baby's gasking for air (something a teen-aged mother once told me when I was a med student in Michigan - "my baby's gasking for air")... now it's too quiet, I don't know if she's breathing.

But everyone's forgotten to mention to you (except maybe scared teen mom from Michigan, sorry, sister, I shoulda listened to your wisdom then), sleepless, frightened new parent, is that babies sound totally ca-razy when they sleep - they sigh, they snort, they'll fart, they'll whimper, weep, then whimper-weep, then they'll make a particular ululation that I can only describe as the cry of a miniature tauntaun in heat, actually, she sounds like Daryl Hannah in Splash, she sounds like a weird mermaid, which is as alarming as it sounds, and then settle down again to leave you wondering, in the pitchy blackness of your once adults-only bedroom, is she breathing?

Apparently, sleeping like a baby means that you sleep and don't give a rat's ass about how totally weird and scary you sound to the people who are still awake around you.

I SHALL CALL HER "MINI"

Small versions of anything are just cute.  Just think - full-grown adult lion:  scary.  Baby lion?  Adorable!

Big corn?  Stuck in your teeth.  Baby corn?  Add Tom Hanks and it's comedy gold.

Giant buddha statue made of stone?  Kinda weird.  Little tiny buddha statue on your dashboard?  Kinda cute.

Baby baby-fart?  Cute!  Big baby-fart followed by full diaper - not so cute.

MILESTONES!

Today, my baby threw up in my mouth for the first time.

The bucket-list keeps getting shorter...

A PENNY SAVED

The thrill of parenting is in such quotidian pleasures as finding a deal.

F'rinstance, a deal for diapers.  Typically, it makes sense to buy a larger pack as you get a better deal, right?  So, while awaiting our child to finally grow out of newborn diapers, we've been buying them in an ad hoc fashion from Target.  We usually get the Pampers Swaddlers newborn (with wetness indicator!) in a 96 pack.

Today, however, I discovered that there's a sale on the 36 count packs for $9.49, which works out to a unit price of about 26 cents - but wait, there's more!  If you buy three of the 36 packs you receive a $5 Target gift card, and of course, even though that essentially ensures more money coming into their coffers, that effectively decreases the unit price to about 21 cents, and boom, you're doublin' your money all day long, or at least getting a fairly good deal.

And even those few cents can add up and make a difference - after all, even a humble penny can be worth far more than its currency value.

Now if only I could figure out a way for this trick to pay for a trip to Hawaii...

EVERYTHING KEEPS CHANGING, OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Another afternoon spent getting the baby to relax, which got me thinking:

When I first started dating - actually, throughout my relationships with women - there'd be many occasions when something wouldn't quite be comfortable.  Now, don't read something naughty in here that isn't there;  what I mean is that with past girlfriends, your hands would be entwined in a particular way that the circulation to your fingertips would slowly be strangulated off, or you're sitting next to each other in an awkward way that's straining one of your knee's ligaments, or perhaps you're cuddling in the way they always do in the movies, only in films they don't mention the fact that your arm is slowly falling asleep and her elbow is digging uncomfortably into your spare tire flab, but you don't care, this is awesome, it's you and your girlfriend!

I'm reminded of the above because right now, I'm on the bouncy ball with the baby strapped to my chest with the Ergo, browsing the interwebs.  Her beautiful sleeping face is just below my chin so I just have to tilt my head a little to kiss her brow or sniff her hair.  And her left zygomatic arch and mandible are digging into my sternum in the most uncomfortable fashion, no matter how much and how gently I've tried to adjust her face's position, and like with those old girlfriends I can't seem to get comfortable. It's a bit tortuous.

But sitting here, listening to her quiet little baby's farts while she slumbers with the boniest part of her head and face pressed into the most sensitive bits of my torso, I wouldn't move her and wake her for the world, I love being here right now with my baby, our baby, our beautiful child, pressed against my heart.

Plus, if she woke up, I wouldn't be able to blog anymore.