Don’t you feel special?!?

So this going to bed thing.  It’s quite divine.  In fact, I am, yet again, celebrating the silence.  This time I’m trying a coffee laced with dark rum.  It’s pretty disgusting.  But if it makes me feel warm and fuzzy and all happy to be alive then I’ll try it. 

I should state that I do celebrate without the use of alcohol.  On occasion.

So, this beddie bye thing.

For about a month now night time has been a slippery slope into insanity.  Silas simply would not go to bed. 

Well, that’s a lie.  He did sleep. 

I should say that he did not go to sleep on his own and he did not go early.  No, instead, after hours of coddling and endless cups of milk, he would eventually drift into slumber stretched out to his maximum wingspan in our bed, kicking and shoving the whole night through.  We’d try to get him to bed around 8 and then would sigh with relief when he finally started in with the ole lazy eye around 10:30.

This might not sound like a big deal.  But, oh, it was.  Two to three hours of every evening were tied up with cooing and reading and shushing and snuggling and still the boy wasn’t getting enough sleep.  I was starting to feel highly inadequate.

So, against my husband’s wishes– in fact he called me a night-time nazi and referred to me as Ms. Rigid-Rules-and-Shit and yes, I’ve forgiven him– I employed the ole cry-it-out routine.  Again. 

And this time, like last time, it worked.

The recipe:  simply go through your pre-established bedtime routine, place the child in their crib or bed, then listen to them scream at the top of their little lungs for an undisclosed amount of time.  If necessary repeat until you have achieved the desired effect.  Chef’s Tip:  Turn the TV up to its maximum decible level to drown out the screaming.

Now do I sound like a heartless, alcoholic psycho-mama?

Good, that’s what I was trying for.

Just kidding.

So, I guess I’m making light of this shrieking routine.  It is awful.  And, while many experts claim that it is a boundary setting exercise in which children learn to soothe themselves, I am not quite sure that it isn’t more like torture.  Do what we say or the screaming will persist!  It’s like breaking a wild stallion.

Still, it works.

And here lately, I’ve been a big proponent of “whatever works”.

Recently, I spent some time with a couple of moms from a group I joined when Silas was still a new baby.  I hadn’t seen these mama/babies in awhile and it was immediately noticable how much the babies had changed.  Almost as quickly, I noticed how much I had changed.

When I was a new mom and a stay at home mom, I believe that I was deeply intense about doing things the right way.  I studied up and was really very anal.  I prided myself on homecooked baby food and reusable diapers.   I wouldn’t have the TV on if Silas was in the room and I seriously debated the long term effects of using a pacifier.  I was super uptight.  And, even worse, I was kind-of a poser.  I mean I was inauthentic.  If I strayed outside the lines– say, gave Silas a generic brand white flour biscuit– I would cover it up.  Pretend that I was all holier than holy. 

I have written about this before and I may be exaggerating a bit, but the above does describe how I felt.  At least with other mothers. 

Since then,  I’ve come clean. 

While I still try to do the right thing, I’m not all Ms. Rigid Rules.  On our last plane ride, I admittedly gave Silas Dum-Dums before take off, gave him juice (dear God, not juice!) on the way up, then popped a DVD in our portable player for the ride.  I probably would have given him Xanex if I knew it would keep him quiet.  (That’s a joke.)

But, seriously, it worked.

And, I’m proud of myself for admitting that to the other mothers.  I also shared that on the weekends we put a movie on in our bedroom and let Silas watch it while we continue to sleep.  And, I fought the urge to feel guilty when we were discussing the importance of proper shoes and I had Silas in a pair one size too large. 

These, really, are all small things.  But under a certain micrscope, they can seem astronomical.

I mean, I do what I can.

(I’m also proud that I decided not to drink the spiked coffee.  It may not seem like it, but I’ve been cutting way back.  Yay, me!)

So, back to this crying it out thing.  I refuse to analyze it.  I did it.  It only took one night and it worked.  Silas has been happily going to bed– at 8:30, in his own bed– for almost a week now.  And while it may have been the inconsistency of our traveling and vacation that knocked Silas off center initially, I refuse to feel guilty and I had to reign it in.

And, of course, I can gloat in front of my husband.

That alone makes it all the worthwhile.

So, now, dear readers, I raise my arm in triumph and with confidence to salute myself for my honesty and my sensibility and to pour this crap coffee down the sink.

Until tommorow…  or at least until very soon.

–Yours Truly

Last night, when I woke to nurse Silas, he ate eagerly. I rocked in the glider dreaming of sleep. When he was finished, he stopped and smiled at me and didn’t make a sound. I hugged him, whispered good night and put him back in his crib. He smiled again, a big, bright-eyed, smile. The kind that only babies give– with nothing but love and innocence behind it. Then he grabbed his taggie blanket, rolled on his side, and went to sleep. It was almost divine.

This morning at nap time, he feel asleep without a peep. When he woke up, he didn’t cry for me. I heard him playing over the monitor. He was talking and rolling and laughing to himself. When I looked over the edge of his crib, he just smiled and continued playing. He’s nearly self-sufficient.

But, this afternoon, he was not so happy. It was not divine. As his protests got louder, I kept telling myself: You have to finish what you’ve started. Minor interruptions will set us back. He’s happier. He’s sleeping. I’m so damn liberated. I scoured the sleep book for what I don’t know. Convinced myself that these were different cries. Not just protests. Went to his room and found him on his stomach. It scared me. I picked him up and nursed him and put him down again.

Of course, he cried again. Louder this time.
I folded laundry. Put it away. Hummed to myself.

When he stopped crying, I thought I could still hear him. Like a person who has lost their arm, but reaches to scratch it anyway.

My heart wouldn’t slow down.

Ah! The spicy plum-ness of Malbec and the crisp, clean silence that falls over a house when the baby is down for the night! It’s almost naughty– how pleased I am. But, the boy is asleep and it only took 35 minutes.

35 minutes may sound like a lot of time to listen to your child scream. And, before we had Silas, I thought that parents who let their children cry themselves to sleep were Grinch-like in their sheer inhumanity.
But, now, I am toasting my ability to turn a deaf ear. Ah! The Malbec!

Okay, I’ve been lying about the Malbec. I didn’t even open the Malbec. In fact, I didn’t even buy the Malbec. Well, I ordered it, but I haven’t picked it up yet. I just wanted to sound sophisticated and like I knew a little about wine. But, in order to enjoy a glass of wine and not open one of the bottles that I shipped myself from Cortona last November and are REAL, I would have to open a bottle of San Sebastian Castillo Red, which is good, but made from the Muscadine and not exactly sexy. Sexy is what I have in mind. So, I’m going to put on some jazz. There it is– that throaty vixen of a saxophone, that temptress of a trumpet. And open the bottle of Poliziano Vino Nobile di Montipulciano, 2003.

Ah! The warm glow of a $50 bottle!

I feel like I’m 21 and I just made eyes at some guy across the bar and I am just so certain that he’s going to buy me a beer and then… well, you know what happens.

So, Silas is asleep. Yes, asleep. In his crib. And, I’m telling you that it was, and I have to speak bluntly here, pretty much completely painless. Perhaps that is because we generally spend more than 35 minutes lulling him to sleep, or perhaps it is because we had convinced ourselves that he was really just throwing a fit, or perhaps because letting him cry it out was entirely unplanned.

We went to the pediatrician yesterday for a wellness check up and a round of those unbearable, questionable shots. During our “how’s he really doing” conversation where we took the opportunity to brag about all of the superhuman things that Silas has learned how to do, the subject of sleep came up. The ped brought it up, not us. We wouldn’t bring up such a stinky load of dirty garbage. But, he did. So, we had to go with it.

After taking a brief second to regain my composure– I was so very Jackie-O, I’m certain he never even noticed– I proceeded to describe our compassionate sleep method. The one we were so smug with ourselves about. And, his smug reply– yes, we know you were on the staff at Harvard!– was “I’m not sure what that’s accomplishing.”

And then, like all of the other sources we’ve consulted, he suggested letting him cry it out.

Bastard! How dare you rain on our parents-of-the-year parade!

But now, I am eating the judgments that I made about my pediatrician but wouldn’t speak aloud to him because he’s an authority figure and you just don’t argue with Harvard graduates AND drinking the wine that I actually plunked off the shelf with my own hands in a little enoteca on a cobbled medieval street in Tuscany. I am enjoying the silence in the house (I checked on the little guy and he is snuggled up with the little taggie blanket that my friend Melisa made him and sucking his adorable little thumb… can you write the word “little” a few more times, please?) and listening to jazz, jazz, jazz.

Life really ain’t so bad! In fact, despite the headaches, it is still damn good!

Instead, I was parked on an exercise ball beside my child’s crib, staring at the bowl of cooling and thus congealing lemon grass and coconut soup that was supposed to be my lunch, with a beer in my right hand, a book balanced on my lap, and my forefinger and thumb strategically placed in Silas’s mouth so that he had less of a chance of actually biting me. Motherhood a balancing act?!? Whatever do you mean?