Axel's Rules of Sleep

knockedup — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:01:00 GMT

1. Sleep cannot be commanded.

It is futile to attempt to command a baby to sleep. That's why sleep deprivation, rather than forcing someone to sleep for days, is an instrument of torture. Perhaps we can all be wooed a bit into sleep and happiness by the right environments, but there's only so much a warm bath and a off-tune Otis Redding tune can do for my baby. Once I've wooed Axel to the edge of sleep, only he can jump into- and stay in - that state. I keep forgetting this rule and having to re-learn it because, in the bleary-eyed exhaustion of the night, telling a baby that he has to go to sleep and not sleeping is not an option is pretty easy to fall back on.

2. Never turn on the television while attempting to sleep train your baby. Especially not the news.

One night, while home alone with Axel, he woke up about 15 minutes after falling asleep. I decided to let him fuss for about five minutes, as he'd cried for a few minutes, then fallen asleep, the last time I tried it (see rule nine). This time, though, he didn't wind down (see 10). So, I went in, rocked him for a bit, and we tried again. I went into the living room and flipped on the TV. At that moment, the sparkly-eyed newscaster - who looked like she got at least six hours of sleep in a row every night and a luxurious nap on top - chattered on about a tiny baby who'd just died, and was then left on the doorstep of a local hospital. The baby wore a pink sleeper and white socks. I heard one of Axel's forlorn sobs over the news, and I couldn't let him cry after hearing that story. The next night, Sean went to the hospital, so I'm sure it will take me awhile to work back up to even a five-minute fuss tolerance.

3. Rice cereal does not lead to longer stretches of sleep.

I said I wasn't going to try it. Well, I did. My totally unscientific study of a handful of parents I know found that some thought it worked and some didn't. Our pediatrician said it doesn't usually, but every once in awhile it seems to help. I latched on to the sliver of possibility that it would help, and mixed up a batch of it with breast milk and fed it to Axel. After almost a week of rice cereal, we have only found that Axel thinks red spoons belong inside of his mouth at all times, and, even if babies chow it down, rice cereal tastes like crap. I made the mistake of licking it off my finger and almost threw up on the spot.

4. A baby's ability to fall asleep on his/her own, to fall asleep easily, or to fall asleep under various conditions, does not necessarily mean he/she will stay asleep for any longer

In the last six weeks, Axel's become much better at falling asleep at night. Sean no longer has to bounce on the exercise ball with him for a half an hour, begging him to drop off. I don't waltz around the bedroom singing Petula Clark tunes over and over again for almost an hour. Axel has his bath, gets lotioned-up, punches the pages of a few board books, and then nurses or is rocked a little by his father. Then, the kid is out. The ease with which he now falls asleep, though, seems to have no relationship with the length of time he stays asleep. There was a time when Axel fell asleep at 7:30 or 8 pm and only woke up once before getting up for the day at 6:30 or 7. That blessed period seems to have been no more than a cruel joke he played on us to show what a relatively good night's sleep feels like. While he's gotten a little better from the sleep trainwreck of three weeks ago - meaning that I now count the number of times he wakes up, whereas for a bit there I just stopped writing it all down in his journal because that made the horror of it all too concrete - he's still up an average of three times a night.

5. Babies who do not sleep are not always cranky. Their parents, on the other hand, can be snarky bastards.

Axel's a happy kid, whether he's napped that day for two thirty-minute bouts or for a total of three hours. He can be easily convinced to smile at anyone. He even smiles at inanimate objects - like his stuffed giraffe - from time to time. I, however, have been reduced to flipping off people who drive in the bike lane while I'm running, pushing Axel in his stroller. Yes, I know that flipping drivers off is juvenile and not such a great habit to display in front of my infant son. But I'm tired and sometimes that makes me mean. Actually, there's a good chance I might have done that even on eight hours of sleep. It's a bike lane, not a special car lane with thick white lines painted on either side of it.

6. The phrase, "Let sleeping dogs lie," is stupid.

Dogs? Really? Are there lots of dogs with insomnia out there? Should we start wrapping little Ambien pills in bacon and feeding it to them? Who even thought that phrase up? Where's the baby Ambien?

7. Rescue Remedy may work for someone, somewhere, but not Axel.

Rescue Remedy is an herbal flower thing recommended by our doctor. You can put it in the bath or take it orally. Axel twists up his mouth in disgust when I try to put a few drops underneath his toungue. Drops of it in the bath seem to help me calm down, but Axel is impervious to its powers.

8. I am really, really irrational at 3 am. And 4:30 am. And 5. And, now, at any time after 8 pm and before 8 am.

That's when the people who are trying to raise money for that police-related league for which donations are not tax deductible should call me, because I'll probably say anything to get them off the phone. Actually, if those people can come over and make my baby sleep for ten hours straight, I might just sign over my retirement fund to them.

9. What worked before may not work again. But it might. Then again, it might not.

One night, I decided to let Axel fuss for a few minutes and see what happened. After about five minutes, he started quieting down. His cries turned to sporadic, calm squeaks, and then silence. That worked again another night. And then, it stopped working. Maybe it's because he's going through early teething, or he has a cold, or he's lonely or he had a baby nightmare about whatever horrible things it is that haunt babies - you know, like a world in which they try to put things in their mouth and everything bounces off the edge of their lips as though their mouths are shielded by a forcefield, maybe. I'm sure there's some reason that the things that work stop working, it's just I'm too damn tired to figure it out.

10. Most importantly, there are no rules.

Everyone's got a sleep strategy or a sleep theory. There's no guarantee that what worked for your kid is going to work for any other kid. Regular naps during the day supposedly help sleep at night, as do regular bedtimes. Rice cereal, stress, weather changes, cosleeping, not cosleeping, being too hot or too cold, a full moon, no moon, Big Foot....Maybe some of those have helped Axel, and his sleep would be even more crappy without those things, but they haven't helped to the extent that I'd like them to.

My newest theory: sleep at night makes babies sleep at night. So, the more rest a baby has on one night, the more likely he'll rest the next night. Lack of sleep at night leads to more lack of sleep at night. How to break the cycle? I don't know. My other theory: Axel needs to get tanked up more during the day. He's a very particular eater and, often, doesn't take more than 2 - 3 ounces from a bottle feeding at daycare or from his father or grandparents. Sometimes he just nurses for a few minutes with me, and other times he does a big marathon session. Eating, however, is like sleep - you can create opportunities for eating, but you can't force a baby to gulp more milk down.

Axel's the anti-sleep Superman and we've yet to find the Kryptonite that will break him. But we will. Oh yes, we will. And then we'll capture El Chupacabra and go on the road, showing off our goat-eating vampire and selling our sleep solutions to the masses.

Knocked Up : el chupacabra

Axel's Rules of Sleep