Sleep Should Be A Pleasure For All Concerned

Looking down the business end of a long-awaited three days of sleep training Fresco I found myself waffling this afternoon. He’s really a very good, very happy baby, I rationalized (can you call it rationalization if it is entirely irrelevant?) while making some tea. Hardly a bother at all, I thought.

Falsely, I might add. I think falsely that he is hardly a bother at all. A worthwhile bother, yes, but he is a bother. And he was napping at the time. Absence, fond heart, etc.

We have planned this well. Trombone is at his grandparents’ house till Saturday. We have no sickness in the house. Fresco’s immunizations last week went fine; he appears to be between bouts of Crazy Fucking What, Now? behavior and I am the only one who can tell this but it’s true, his normal behavior skates pretttty close to the Crazy Fucking What, Now? line but the true Crazy Fucking What, Now? behavior is about a week past.

The only possible better time to do this would have been about 6 months ago, before he became such a person, such a little walking, talking, gesturing, grudge-holding, contrary person. But if I could go back 6 months I’d probably keep going, back to about 2002. That was a pretty good year. So let’s not fool with the time travel.

It is dreary even to type. Every night he goes to sleep at about 7 pm. Sometimes 6:30. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to nurse him to sleep. Sometimes we have to wrestle for 45 minutes. Sometimes I have to leave him in the crib, walk away while he screams, come back to hold him tight until he passes out, 5 minutes later.

Then he wakes up at 9. Or 10. Or 8. Or 11:15. Or all of those times.

He averages 3 wakings a night. He gets up for the day between 5 and 6, but sometimes I have to nurse him back down at 4:30 and he sleeps till 5:10.

It’s the inconsistency that kills me. Is killing me.

He has forgotten how to put himself to sleep – the last time he did it was September, I think? Or October? He has to learn again. I hate to fuck with the status quo, even if I am dissatisfied with the status quo. What if it gets worse? How could it get worse. How.

It’s like right before you get dental work. Your teeth feel fine. You know that after the dental work you won’t be able to chew for a week on one side. Your mouth will be frozen for an afternoon. You’ll have that headache from the drill. I can’t SEE the hole in my tooth right now. It isn’t causing me any pain. Why fill it? Let’s just leave it. Maybe it’ll – I don’t know – fill itself?

And maybe a few days go by. And then you’re out for a Sunday drive and you stop at a roadside ice cream shop and you take a lick of some ice cream and suddenly you are in this horrible, terrible pain and you think dammit, why didn’t I get this tooth filled. Now I’m out in the country on a Sunday drive, licking ice cream that causes me pain and I can’t get to the dentist.

I don’t want to do this. I think it is going to be incredibly hard. The child is willful. He likes what he likes and does not hold with the rest. He is a born protester. Plus, he has just learned to give kisses and has spent the day being gooey and charming and kissing everything, especially me, these adorable little puckered-lip-smooches. Every time I go back in that room and don’t pick him up my heart will break a little more.

But I do want to do this. I want to stop having to intervene in every nap at the 45 minute mark. I want to spend less time in the rocking chair, waiting for him to be asleep enough to put down in his crib. I want to not wake up to his cries in the night, thinking it’s 3 am, being crestfallen because it’s only 11 pm and 3 am is yet to come, knowing I will probably be up then, too. I want him to go to sleep at bedtime and wake up in the morning. I want to be DONE for the day when I am DONE for the day. I want him and Trombone to share a room so we can have our spare room back.

If wishes were horses –

I would ride mine around the countryside and stop for ice cream.

Instead I will stay and sweat in the city and just hope like hell that this plan of ours is a success.