A few weeks ago we took the kids out to dinner, not an unusual occurrence. We eat in many family friendly restaurants with the kids. They are quite accustomed to the fact that they can’t run around the restaurant, tend to keep their volume to an acceptable level (for that sort of restaurant, of course) and eat most everything we give them. Unless we have an off day or plan extraordinarily badly, our odds of a pleasant meal are quite good.
As we were finishing up and leaving the restaurant, a family walked by us with a young boy, maybe 4 years old. The mother looked at us enviously and quietly commented on how well our children had behaved. “He’s not so good in restaurants” she shrugged heavily, indicating her son.
As I looked at her tired face, I recalled some great advice I was given a long time ago. If you see a child being great, you are only seeing one tiny part of their day. You didn’t see an hour earlier and you aren’t going to see an hour later. It’s out of context, and you have no idea what struggles that family encounters in a different setting.
I smiled at this mom, smiled at her son and joked that we better have good dining experiences for all the sleep issues we deal with at home. Her shoulders dropped a mile, if not more, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. “You have sleep issues?” she asked. “Yeah” I replied. “I think my daughter has broken every sleep book.” She inquired, “When did she start sleeping through the night?”. It was my turn to shrug. “Let’s hope she learns soon. So far, she doesn’t.” Yes, my daughter is 2.5 years old. Turns out this little boy started sleeping all night at 6 months and hasn’t looked back. We had returned to a level playing field again. The mom was beyond relieved.
I’ll clarify. We do not get up to deal with my daughter every night. At this point, we mostly ignore her crying at night unless the daytime provided us some information to suggest she may be sick or have a special need on that particular occasion. This has not deterred her from waking us up, twice a night, most nights of her life. Occasionally we have a month or so where we get to sleep all night for multiple nights (YES!!!!) but it’s more likely that our nights of sleeping through are infrequent and non sequential. We hoped that ignoring would result in that behavior dying out. So far, it has not. We live in hopes.
Naps were a bit more disastrous. For months of the first year and a half of their lives, I was practically housebound as a result of her not napping. If she didn’t nap, I wasn’t crazy enough to go out alone with two babies, her overtired self being one of them. If she did nap, it took her so long to fall asleep that by the time she woke up it was too late to get out of the house anyway. Did I handle this well? No, not really… Lack of sleep and human contact does NOT suit my personality. I have no doubt that I drove my husband crazy with the associated stress levels.
And I wasn’t kidding about her breaking the sleep books. I don’t know how many books, articles and websites I read about sleep training. “Cry it out” was attractive until it flat out failed. When the book say you have to wait for results, they didn’t mean that your child should be screaming 90 minutes, twice a day for 3 months. Time for plan B. And plan C. Oh, and plan D. We tried timed visits to the crib with varied plans of picking up vs. not picking up. We played with light in the room, temperature, number of animals in the crib. You name it, we tried it. I dare you to come up with a new theory. Actually, I Double dog dare you! We were in constant research mode… without a hypothesis.
At first I would solicit the advice of fellow parents, but not a single piece of advice made a bit of difference. As this got more frustrating I stopped even asking. Recently one of my friends heard me mention sleep and asked if the problem had returned. I guess I just forgot that I had ceased to talk about it. It had not returned, it had continued.
I am writing about this today because, when you combine a long vacation and a somewhat erratic schedule on the return home, you get sleep schedule chaos. It’s worth it, to get away, but it’s not simple. Our naptime screaming had become a thing of the past and today my daughter took 45 minutes of screaming to finally give in to her fatigue. Finally, blessed silence.
Am I stressed out? Not really. A few months ago this would have had me on edge, grumpy as hell and ready to give my husband a detailed account when he got home. Not an overly welcome story, you can imagine. “Welcome home honey. Want to hear how my day stunk?” Hmmm….. Over the past few months, though, I have come to a certain peace with our little sleep demon, uh, I mean problem. I have come to accept that my daughter, just like every other person, is just a person. A spectacular person. She’s sweet and generous and loves to share her snacks with her friends and her brother. She’s smart, she’s naughty as hell and she loves to dance to every song she hears. She loves to play with her toys and gives the best hugs when she’s in the mood. Oh, and she sleeps like crap.
When you put it that way, doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
Don’t we all just want our loved ones to accept us the way we are? I know that I do.
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