Looking Back, Looking Forward

I've mentioned before that Cubby hardly ever slept as a baby. Looking back, it was probably colic, but no one told us so at the time--probably because I kept describing the problem as "she wants to nurse constantly" instead of "she cries like she's possessed by a demon anytime she's not nursing." Her Nice Pediatrician ran basic tests that all came back negative, and could find no real reason for the fact that she didn't sleep. A second opinion from Jerkwad Pediatrician was as follows: "There's nothing wrong with her. [Read: "There's something wrong with you."] You just need to decide whether you're going to let her be the boss. Remember, she joined your family and not the other way around." Sorry, but I was sure the Napoleonic desire for world domination didn't kick in until at least the sixth month of life; apparently this guy believed all our hysterical baby needed was a good dose of humility.

So, days, weeks, and months passed with me becoming sleep deprived to the point where I told Bear, "My vision is really blurry. I think I need new contacts." It turned out what I needed was more than two consecutive hours' sleep, and once I eventually got that, my vision returned to normal--I had literally been so tired, I couldn't see straight.

When I say that Cubby hardly slept, I'm not exaggerating. I recently found the sleep journal I began keeping as part of my Why Won't This Baby Sleep Obsession, and found a page with a giant happy face scrawled over it, because...

...drum roll, please...

...she had "only" woken up 7 times in 11 hours that night. She was 4 months old at the time and this was what I considered to be huge progress. If she slept a total of 8-9 hours in any 24-hour period, it was a good day for her.

Did I mention that she also didn't nap for longer than 45 minutes at any given time?

Or that she would only fall asleep while nursing, and would wake up furious and inconsolable if I dared attempt to put her down?

Putting her to bed "for the night" took hours...the record, in fact, was 7 hours spent nursing her to sleep, desperately trying to put her down without waking her up, and then beginning the hour-long process of consoling her, bouncing her until my spine was ready to collapse, and then nursing her back to sleep again when her eyes inevitably popped open and the screaming began again. Seven. Hours. And that was just to get her to sleep for maybe 2-3 hours, tops, before she was awake again for who-knows-how-long.

I could never fully describe to any sane person what life was like in those days. I showered on military time--3 minutes, in and out--while Cubby screamed hysterically in Bear's arms the whole time. I couldn't leave the apartment, or even the room, because she freaked out. She screamed her guts out anytime we were in the car. Grocery shopping and all social events involved me nursing her while simultaneously trying to operate a shopping cart or act like a human around family/friends, and anytime I removed her and tried to hold her upright, she would literally THROW all of her body weight sideways to try and get back into a nursing position (screaming the entire time, of course). She wouldn't take a bottle or a pacifier, so it was all me, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no matter how much everyone else tried to help. I assume Bear felt frustrated and helpless, though I was too much of a zombie to really notice at the time.

The screaming is another thing I couldn't describe to anyone who didn't witness it themselves, or hasn't had a colicky child of their own: bloodcurdling, desperate, hysterical cries that made my blood run cold. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law, both pediatric nurses, once convinced me at a family gathering to hand Cubby over and leave the room, saying they--two licensed and very capable professionals--could definitely handle her while I took a break. 30 minutes of ceaseless screaming later, I claimed her back and hardly registered the "OMG, WTH is wrong with this baby?!" looks on their faces.

In short, my stress level, on a scale of 1-10, was about 47 billion, all the time. It got to the point where I stopped even trying to sleep, because staying awake was easier than tasting a few delicious moments of rest and then having to drag myself up again. I'm pretty sure I spent every second of every day trying to figure out why this baby wouldn't sleep and how we could "fix" her.

I bought a stack of books on getting your baby to sleep, and then struggled to stay awake and alert enough to understand each one and formulate a Plan of Action. There was The No-Cry Sleep Solution (nice ideas but nothing effective), Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems (turns out, Ferber wasn't quite the Nazi he's often made out to be, but I couldn't bear the idea of just leaving her to cry), Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (I loathed this book, the author, and his attitude with as much energy as I could muster--apparently he thinks you're a sucker if you're not willing to let your baby cry for upwards of TWO AND A HALF HOURS if that's what it takes), and finally, Good Night, Sleep Tight, which turned out to be at least somewhat helpful. We used it when Cubby was 6-7 months old, and it did teach her to fall asleep without nursing, and cut her night wakings down to 2-4 per night...but the process was hellish for all of us because it did involve letting her cry while we attempted to "soothe baby to sleep without picking her up." I love how the books make it sound so peaceful and matter-of-fact, when I distinctly remember telling Bear that I would sincerely, literally, rather saw my own leg off than go through one more night like this.

Why am I writing about this now? For one thing, I think all parents of colicky (or whatever she was) babies suffer from a version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from which we'll never fully recover. It's been 1 1/2 years since the worst of it was over, and I still remember it all vividly. I regret not enjoying Cubby's baby stage as much as I probably could have, if I hadn't been so focused on "fixing" her and grilling other mothers on whether their babies slept as badly as mine (I rarely found one who did). Will Cubby Two be the complete opposite, as most kind and optimistic family members and friends insist? Will s/he prove that the phrase "sleep like a baby" is not actually a cruel and ironic joke...and if so, will we even know what to do with him/her? If not, will I handle it better the second time around? Most importantly, will I be able to hear him/her cry without wetting my pants and/or experiencing a Vietnam-like flashback? We'll soon find out.

In the meantime, all of this relates to the cheesy and mostly-useless tradition of making New Year's resolutions. The former Incredible Insomniac Child sleeps 8pm-8am straight almost without fail these days, and I, for the past 1 1/2 years, have been using the "making up for lost sleep" excuse to sleep until that moment, somewhere between 8 and 8:30 a.m., when she starts yelling, "Mom-MAY! Where ah you? Cin you come and change my die-pah?" Well, no more. I've got Christmas cookies to burn off, an overly-energetic puppy to wear out, and a new baby to prepare for, and all of this means I must start setting my alarm for 7 a.m. (yes, I realize this is still considered "sleeping in" to parents of most toddlers, who are traditionally up before dawn) and taking said pup for a long walk before Cubby wakes up. It'll be good for both of us: Cate and me.

But first, I think I'm going to need to build a Tom & Jerry or Wallace & Gromit-style alarm clock-slash-haul-me-out-of-bed apparatus. It might take a while...