When I was six months pregnant with my now-14-month-old son, my friend the child psychologist
gave me the book
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth and told me I should absolutely read it. At the time, the gift caught me off guard:
Babies sleep; that's what they do, I thought.
What could be so hard about that? Do we really need a book about this?
Of all the things I had thought about having a baby or worried about in
becoming a parent, the baby's sleep habits certainly wasn't one of them.
By the time my son was about four months old, I realized it: When you have an
infant, worrying about your baby's sleep habits is pretty much
all you do.
Your inner monologue is constantly something along the lines of "He's
sleeping late this morning -- I'm glad to sleep in, too, but if he
doesn't wake up soon he won't take his morning nap. And if he doesn't
take his morning nap, he'll fall asleep in the car on the way to the
store, and then if he sleeps too long in the car, he won't take his
afternoon nap until late and then he'll end up falling asleep early
tonight and then he might be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and oh, there he is now -- guess I'd better get up." For a while there, creating a sleep schedule for your child, adapting it as he grows, and keeping him well rested can feel like a full-time job all of its own. But it is definitely worth it and I definitely recommend the book as a source of information and inspiration.
Now, some of the advice in Weissbluth's book is just plain silly:
If your child cries in the night, don't go to him unless he's hot, cold, or sick. (How exactly a parent knows if her child is hot, cold, or sick without going to him is a mystery to me.) But the book's sometimes hardline admonitions to let your child learn to fall asleep on his own are just what a lot of new parents need to hear in this modern age of having never-let-your-child-cry-under-any-circumstances-or-you'll-probably-cause-permanent-damage attachment parenting philosophy. But even more important than the book's warning that you may have to let children "cry it out" is its message that most children, especially ones with behavioral problems, AREN'T GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP.
From the day he was born, my son has apparently had a talent for sleeping long stretches. For the first two months, he pretty much slept all the time -- day and night -- except to eat. He took a predictable four-hour afternoon nap for many months and developed blissful six-hour night stretches early on. By the time he was four months, he slept about nine hours straight at night. It was great, but none of this was due to anything I did -- I was just lucky. I had given birth to a world champion sleeper -- an
easy baby, as the book calls him.
Around six months, my son was ready to do what Weissbluth would describe as
actually sleeping through the night -- 11 1/2 to 12 1/2 hours, 7-ish p.m. to 7-ish a.m. I would always make sure to get him home before his bedtime and check for cues that he might like to go to sleep even earlier -- often 6:30 p.m. I would rock him and put him down awake but drowsy as the book described and, if necessary, let him fuss a bit (usually less than 90 seconds, sometimes five minutes) after I put him down. By about 12 months, the bedtime routine and rocking pretty much became obsolete. My son knew when he was ready for bed. He no longer cried when I put him down to sleep; in fact, he started sometimes crying
until I put him down to sleep. We had a week of regression around 13 months in which I had to let him fuss a few minutes after putting him down again, but he quickly went back to his normal, crib-loving self. And I'm sure we'll go through a regression again, but I have learned that consistency pays off and that I need to respect my child's space and create an environment in which he is free to learn things on his own.
Here's the thing: Naps are important, but they're also wildly unpredictable. Sometimes they go well, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're taken at home, sometimes elsewhere. Sometimes falling asleep in the car on the way home from an innocent trip to the grocery store can ruin the whole day. Sometimes, 45 minutes into your exhausted son's nap, your husband will use the home phone to call his cell phone in an attempt to locate it and discover it is set on outdoor volume and is one wall away from your child's nursery and wakes up your son, who won't go back to sleep and ends up falling asleep before dinner and you want to pinch your husband's head off and kick it down the street. (Hypothetically, of course.) So bedtime is easier to control than naptime, and we try to control it.
I'm pretty sure most others see me as a ridiculous, dogmatic, horribly inflexible person who won't keep her child up late even just this one time. To be honest, I certainly wish I could make the occasional exception -- but my little guy would not have any part of that. By 7:45 p.m., he'd be A) screaming, or B) asleep. Last Friday night, I went to an evening college basketball game and couldn't believe how many babies and young children were there. I was jealous. But then I wondered, "How much sleep are these kids getting at night? If they stay up until 10 p.m., are they sleeping until 10 a.m.? Surely not."
I constantly get strange looks when I go somewhere in the evening and answer that C.J. is at home asleep. Sure, I'd love to show him off to others and spend more time with him at night, but the most important thing is to do what's right for him: Let him get his sleep.
It's not the answer most people want, but it's the best advice I have: Put your kid to bed earlier. Oh, and read
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. But mostly just put your kid to bed earlier.
In the end, it can be hard -- especially for parents who work. But it's best for everyone. Get a Netflix subscription or reorganize your cupboards or pretend you're eighty and watch
Wheel of Fortune and go to bed early like I do. Cuz you may be hanging out at home for a little while.
Try to enjoy the silence.
