Train Wreck
Night after night, I listened to my son wail and the Sleep Lady scold me.
by Tamara Berger
January 11, 2007
What's worse, the Sleep Lady had acquired an ally in this war: my husband.
He'd never fully supported the night nursing situation once our baby was
about eight months old. He said, "Let him cry; he'll be fine." My
resolve to put the Sleep Lady behind me was tested by my husband's enthusiasm
for her method, and by the fact that my son's night waking really was starting
to seem like a problem. At eleven months old, he was still waking up at least
three times a night. I found myself flipping through the book and, once again,
answering the siren song of the Sleep Lady. Her preferred method of night weaning
at this stage: cold turkey. Reassure him by his crib, she advised, and most importantly,
be consistent.
That first night was hell. As I listened to my son wail for the breast for two
straight hours, I scratched my arms. Hearing him and not going to him created
a nightmarish buzz at the bottom of my throat that reverberated pain from my
baby to me. My husband sat in the rocking chair by his crib and tried to soothe
him. After the two hours of caterwauling, my son finally fell asleep. For about
an hour. Then he woke up again, wailed for another hour, and so on, until I nursed
him at five-thirty in the morning. This went on for five nights.
For the first time, I understood the Sleep Lady's juxtaposition of the
words "forlorn" and "hysterical." My formerly happy baby
was a mess. His night howling tormented me. My breasts were leaking milk.
I couldn't stop thinking, what am I doing wrong? In desperation, I searched
the Sleep Lady's book for answers. "There is Sleep deprivation is a method of torture, as the well-rested experts constantly remind us.no such thing as a tear-free
childhood," she repeatedly droned. By now, I hated her, but couldn't
get away; I began to feel like a masochist, caught in the cycle of abuse with
a violent ex.
Sleep deprivation is a method of torture, as the
well-rested experts constantly remind us. But for me, so was listening to my
baby crying in the dark. When people say: he's just crying because he's
tired and this is not going to wound him, I think what they mean is: he's
suffering, but he's still going to love you in the morning. That breaks
my heart. Some people think that babies are learning all the time and through
crying they learn, for example, that nursing is not necessary at night. Maybe
that's true. But until my son can tell me what he needs, not answering
his cry still feels wrong.
After five nights of listening to him wail, I cracked. It was four a.m. and I suddenly decided
I didn't care if our baby was hungry or not. "He wants to suck on
my breast, not the leg of a stuffed animal!" I screamed at the Sleep Lady's
voice in my head. I snatched my son from his crib and nursed, committing the Sleep Lady system's worst offence of all: "intermittent reinforcement."
"He needs to learn how to self-soothe!" my husband hissed at me in the morning.
"You don't even know what self-soothe is!" I hissed back. "You
haven't read the book."
By this point, The Book had become my sworn enemy. Sleep training requires the
shutting-off of the instinct to go to a crying baby, and in following the Sleep
Lady, I'd shut off not just that instinct, but all of them. If I'd just listened
to myself from the start, worked out a plan that felt right, I
wonder if things would have been different. As it turned out, in the course of
my war with the program, I nursed on demand for close to twelve months, often
only getting four hours of sleep a night. Until my baby turned one, I was living
through what the Sleep Lady would call a major "sleep crutch" quandary.
And throughout, I was relentlessly second-guessing myself. Was I nursing at night
because it was truly an ingenious system? Or was nursing preventing my baby
from reaching a new stage of development? Ultimately, for a mother and baby I
think it's unclear how such a system of rules creates change. In a symbiotic
relationship, it's almost impossible to tell who starts what, who needs
what.
The Sleep Lady had a comeback, of course: "You have to remember that you
are the coach, not the player," she said. "You are giving love and
support and comfort and reassurance — being that secure base. But you aren't
fixing, rescuing or doing it all for him." With competing voices in my
head, what kind of a "secure base" was I supposed to be? My bedroom
was under occupation by a condescending blonde social worker.
Then the most amazing thing happened. A few weeks after my baby turned one, he
slept ten hours — uninterrupted. The next night he did the same thing.
The next night, too. Would he have done so sooner without all those months of
my nursing him at night? Without all those miserable attempts at night weaning?
Without the Sleep Lady's voice in my head? It's impossible to tell.
But even now, when we're all getting more sleep, night nursing a thing
of the past, I still can't quite drown out the Sleep Lady's smug
voice. He needs eleven hours at night, I know she's saying. And he needs
to be nap trained — that means naps in his crib! You have to break the
nurse/sleep connection!
Okay Lady, I hear you. Now sh-sh-sh there, yourself.
©2007 Jack Murnighan and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Tamara Faith Berger has published two novels: Lie With Me and The Way of the
Whore, which is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press (as A Woman Alone at
Night.) She lives and works in Toronto. |
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