Excerpt: The Sleep Trainer
How I gradually came around to the cry-it-out method.
by Sam Apple
June 3, 2009
I thought the plan sounded great until we sat down to discuss the logistics. If Jennifer was no longer going to be feeding Isaac, someone was going to have to comfort him when he woke up in the middle of the night. And since Jennifer had already carried
the burden for months, it was now my turn. I accepted my new responsibility without protest, and, as I expected, the transition to milkless nights did not go over so well with our new roommate. The first sign of Isaac waking up was typically the
soft thumping of his swaddled feet against his mattress, and the sound alone could strike terror in our hearts. "Oh God, please no," I would say at the sound of those first thumps.
"It can't be," Jennifer would say. "He's been asleep for less than an hour."
And then more thumps, now slightly louder — the footsteps of the approaching villain in the scary movie.
"It just can't be."
(Cue the haunting music.)
"No, no, no."
And then the desperate begging. But here the movie analogy breaks down because rather than begging for mercy from the approaching villain, I would be begging for mercy from my fellow victim.
"Please just wake up with him this time," I would say, fully aware that only hours earlier I had confidently assured her that I would be the one to get up and that it really wasn't a big deal.
"But you said — "
"I know. I know. But . . ."
"But what?"
"I'll give you twenty bucks."
"Sam, we share a bank account. You can't bribe—"
"One hundred dollars!"
At four in the morning, I would often be standing in the bathroom with Isaac and a hair dryer.Eventually Isaac's cries would drown out my begging, and I would give in and try to get Isaac to fall back to sleep by laying him down on my chest and rocking wildly from side to side — a technique Jennifer dubbed "the mental institution soothing method"
because both Isaac and I looked as though we belonged in a padded cell.
When my rocking failed, as it almost always did, I would get up, grab the sling, and for the next few minutes pace around the apartment in the dark arguing so vociferously for Jennifer to feed Isaac that we both began to refer to me as "Isaac's agent."
"This is crazy," I would say. "He wants to eat."
"But I thought we agreed that he wasn't going to eat during these hours?"
"Yes, yes, but he really does seem hungry this time."
"I just fed him fifteen minutes ago. He's not—"
"Growth spurt."
"You say 'growth spurt' every night. He should be twenty feet tall by now."
"Okay, how about this: We let him eat for five minutes. You know, just to sort of relax him."
"I don't even have any milk left."
"Two minutes and not one second more."
Sometimes I would win these battles, and sometimes not. When I didn't, my nights were maddeningly similar to my days. At four in the morning, I would often be standing in the bathroom with Isaac and a hair dryer, and as the noise whooshed through my numbed
brain, I would wonder how it could possibly be that in the age of birth control, generation after generation of men and women continued to have babies. I knew that lots of parents experienced some form of this four a.m. despair, and at the time, this thought
depressed me even further. I was prepared to be a cliché in my happiness, but in my unhappiness, I wanted at least the Tolstoyan promise of exceptionalism.
About the Author
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Sam Apple's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, and Slate.com, among many other publications. His first
book, Schlepping Through the Alps, was named a finalist for the PEN America award for a first work of nonfiction. In 2005 he received the
annual Faux Faulkner award. Apple's new book, American Parent, is on sale now. |
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