Sleepwalking

I burst into tears at this suggestion: we’ve been trying to sleep train the un-sleep-trainable. Her cries were biological, not strategic.

Liz Sarb

I’m skinnier than I’ve ever been, and my boobs look fantastic. I’m getting up every 1.5-2 hours through the night to feed my six-month-old, first-born baby girl. On this particular evening, I wake to her cries and stumble into her room around 3 a.m., lift her from her crib, and latch her on. She nurses for a minute, then passes out, milk-drunk, cherubic in the streetlight, her round cheeks made rounder by round-the-clock breastmilk infusions. 

My husband and I play a game with her: we curl her little limbs into a ball, then bounce her up and down in our arms while chanting Ball! Of! Baby! Ball! Of! Baby! This ball of endless fascination and endless need has both ruined my life and given it purpose. 

I need her to sleep. 

My life is governed by wake windows. Every day, I try to recreate the perfect conditions that led, one glorious night, to a six-hour stretch of sleep. I see other moms out strolling with their babies and search their eyes for the wild desperation that possesses me. 

At the baby’s six month visit, I lightly mention how often she wakes during the night. “Oh, that’s not nutrition. She just wants to see you!” the doctor replies. She offers a sleep consultation during a separate $100 visit. I consider whether the price and the hassle of loading up the baby and driving 20 minutes downtown again is worth it. It is.

The next week, after spending the full 20 minutes performing my own unhinged version of Carpool Karaoke to keep the baby awake (must preserve her afternoon nap), we arrive back at the doctor’s office. This time, we’re seeing the Big Boss, the Main Guy, the son of the famous baby sleep guru. He walks into the room like he owns the place, which he does. 

He listens to our Sleep Story and then launches into his spiel. (I’m always on the alert for spiels, and on some level I do recognize that this is one, but I am so tired.) To paraphrase: “Put her to bed at night. She will wake up. Do not, under any circumstances, go into her room. The first night, she might cry for 20 minutes. The second night will be better. Within four days, you will have a baby who sleeps through the night.” He scrawls a contract on a piece of printer paper: I, Elizabeth Sarb, will not go into my baby’s room at night when she cries. It’s all so whimsical. I sign on the dotted line.

I hesitate to describe what happened that first night. Why didn’t Sleep Spiel Man tell me from his perch of Sleep Authority that there is nuance? Why didn’t he advise me to trust my instincts? Too many fake contracts to sell to desperate parents, I guess. What I learned that night is that babies don’t give a shit about contracts. What I also learned is that my limit for listening to my child cry is an hour and a half. At the 90 minute mark, I break the contract, and go into her room. 

I nurse her back to sleep, our tear-stained faces peering at each other, mine whispering “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” hers recording this moment for future recovered-memory therapy sessions. 

And so we continue stumbling through sleepless nights, and by Christmas, she’s waking every hour on the hour to nurse for ten seconds. I begin to resemble a pile of dug-up dog bones with, again, and I must keep mentioning this because they are not one of my prominent features in non-lactation stages of life, great tits.

Our bookshelves fill with the ultimate moneymaker in parental self-help: The Baby Sleep Book. Each one infuses me with hope and clarity, certain that after implementing its method I will wake the next day to sunshine dappling our curtains at the civil hour of, say, 5 a.m., instead of to the wails of a ten-month-old at 12 a.m. (and 2 a.m., 4 a.m…). Every night brings me screaming, along with the baby, right back down to earth. 

Cut to nine foggy months later. We’ve hired a sleep consultant who, after charging a premium to sherpa us through one of the methods from the books and being puzzled when it didn’t work as intended, finally posits that the baby-now-toddler might have sleep apnea. I burst into tears at this suggestion: we’ve been trying to sleep train the un-sleep-trainable. Her cries were biological, not strategic. 

An ENT confirms the diagnosis. Do I want to make an appointment to remove her adenoids and tonsils? Yes. Yes I do. Two weeks after the operation, she is sleeping twelve hours a night, which is convenient, because I’m three months pregnant with her sister.

The new baby is five months old, and we’re seven months into the pandemic. With nothing better to do, and because my memory is short, we decide to sleep train her. What’s the worst that could happen? The first night, she cries for 15 minutes. The second night, she sleeps until morning. 

With the baby independently high-diving into a deep slumber every night (a revelation!), I now have the energy to focus on my firstborn. One evening, both of us exhausted after riding the waves of a massive meltdown, we curl up together, facing each other in her toddler bed. I watch as her heavy eyelashes flutter closed. Her cheeks, red from screaming, not as round as they used to be, soften as her breathing deepens. She dozes off. She is so dear to me, this beautiful intense girl grown from my chubby watchful baby. I haven’t watched her sleep like this since the last time I nursed her; over a year ago now. My tears pool on her pillow. Time is passing. I’ve missed her.