Out of Nothing At All

It was new wine and chestnuts day. That’s the yearly event where we taste my father’s new batch of wine and eat roasted chestnuts. This year, the wine is a little lighter in colour than previous years. The chestnuts were good; rich and meaty. I didn’t get a single mouldy one. Usually there’s a mouldy one. I guess this will be a good year. Trombone tried chewing on my mom’s wineglass. Glass teethers! Awesome!

In the weekend Globe and Mail (print edition) there was an article about baby sleep. It was written by David Eddie, a Canadian writer who is also a father. It went kind of like: Parents expect not to sleep when they have children. But then – they really get no sleep. So they try to get their kids to sleep. There are various ways and doctors who have written books about this. Parents should pick the method that is the best for them.

I read it and didn’t really think much about it until I was nursing Trombone to sleep tonight. (shock/horror!) I had plenty of time to think because he was all wound up and it took him a long time to relax. I tried to figure out what the point was of this article. It wasn’t a review of sleep books. It wasn’t a personal essay about David Eddie’s experience. It wasn’t a profile of a particular doctor, sleep expert or parent. It didn’t contain any information that any modern parent (or non-modern parent, for that matter) doesn’t already have. What parent of a newborn hasn’t heard of “crying it out”? What parent of a newborn hasn’t considered where the baby is going to sleep and what the pros and cons of each location might be? Essentially this collection of paragraphs served one purpose: to give people who don’t have kids just enough information to feel like they know something. Then those people can bug the shit out of those who do have kids.

Picture it. Monday morning, at the office. Annoying single, childless co-worker corners you in the kitchen while you’re microwaving your lunch.
“Hey,” she says, “How’s the parenthood thing? Does your kid sleep?”
“Pretty well,” you say, wondering why she cares, “wakes once a night or so.”
“He’s too young to ‘cry it out’ you know. Most doctors don’t recommend that until babies are 4 months old.”
“Uh, yeah,” you say.
“Co-sleeping can be dangerous,” she adds, “are you co-sleeping?”
“Uh, no,” you say.
“Most parents worry too much about sleep anyway. I read an article about it on the weekend.”

Do we really need more things for annoying co-workers to annoy us with? (NO!) Am I going to rewrite that sentence so it makes sense? (NO!) Do we need to feed the already-dangerous obsession with the sleep habits of our children? (I swear, total strangers on the bus ask me how Trombone is sleeping.) (NO!) And now for some chocolate ice cream. Stay tuned for tomorrow: Maybe I have a bunion!