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.
