agony
I thought up the title for this while sitting on the floor in front of Gabriel's room last night with my head in my hands while M rocked a screaming baby. So you know this is going to be a fun read!
Gabriel has never really been a "good" sleeper. He's slept through the night exactly twice. The first time for no discernable reason on November 13th. The second time after flying to my parents house on January 15th. Each time I thought he'd died.
So he wakes up several times a night and cries and I go in, and recently M goes in, gives him his binky and a little pat and he settles right back down. It's a little draining, but pretty sustainable really, now that I've developed the skill of falling back into REM sleep in 30 seconds or less. We'd even scaled back to a single feeding a night, around 11pm. We were making progress, I tell you, progress! Until two nights ago, when instead of settling back down to sleep around 2 am, G became more agitated when I tried to give him his binky. No settling down. No sweetly gripping Mr. Blabla's ear and rolling over to sleep. He was awake and he was MAD! So I gathered him up and sat down to rock him. He fell asleep almost immediately. I put him back in bed. He arched his back and SCREAMED. LOUDER. I picked him back up and rocked him more. We did this at least a dozen times. I fed him. He woke up immediately upon hitting the crib. Finally, I put him down and let him cry. For ten minutes straight and I watched the clock. That is a LONG time to listen to your child be eviserated by wild boars, which is surely what is happening because otherwise it wouldn't sound so goddamn miserable. After 10 minutes, M went in. I was so wild with fatigue and impotent, confused rage I think he felt it would be unwise to let me try to calm him down (yeah, I'll calm you down, with a BRICK! See, that attitude just not helpful). So they rocked a long, long time. I sat in the hall and tried not to hate myself, second guess myself, wonder too much where I went so wrong. Finally, he laid the squidgy bundle back down, and he stayed asleep. We tiptoed back to bed. It was 4:30. We fell asleep. Till 5:30. I fed him. Asleep. Till 6:30. And we're up for the start of another exciting day Chez Kazoo! The exact same pattern played out last night. If this is the start of a trend, I should probably just kill myself now.
I guess that's the good thing, you really never know. You hope things will get better, so you stagger on. And pretty soon, you've cleared that obstacle and are on to the next. The lesson for today is that no matter how bad you think it is, it can always get worse.
I will probably regret saying that, or even thinking that.
Gabriel has never really been a "good" sleeper. He's slept through the night exactly twice. The first time for no discernable reason on November 13th. The second time after flying to my parents house on January 15th. Each time I thought he'd died.
So he wakes up several times a night and cries and I go in, and recently M goes in, gives him his binky and a little pat and he settles right back down. It's a little draining, but pretty sustainable really, now that I've developed the skill of falling back into REM sleep in 30 seconds or less. We'd even scaled back to a single feeding a night, around 11pm. We were making progress, I tell you, progress! Until two nights ago, when instead of settling back down to sleep around 2 am, G became more agitated when I tried to give him his binky. No settling down. No sweetly gripping Mr. Blabla's ear and rolling over to sleep. He was awake and he was MAD! So I gathered him up and sat down to rock him. He fell asleep almost immediately. I put him back in bed. He arched his back and SCREAMED. LOUDER. I picked him back up and rocked him more. We did this at least a dozen times. I fed him. He woke up immediately upon hitting the crib. Finally, I put him down and let him cry. For ten minutes straight and I watched the clock. That is a LONG time to listen to your child be eviserated by wild boars, which is surely what is happening because otherwise it wouldn't sound so goddamn miserable. After 10 minutes, M went in. I was so wild with fatigue and impotent, confused rage I think he felt it would be unwise to let me try to calm him down (yeah, I'll calm you down, with a BRICK! See, that attitude just not helpful). So they rocked a long, long time. I sat in the hall and tried not to hate myself, second guess myself, wonder too much where I went so wrong. Finally, he laid the squidgy bundle back down, and he stayed asleep. We tiptoed back to bed. It was 4:30. We fell asleep. Till 5:30. I fed him. Asleep. Till 6:30. And we're up for the start of another exciting day Chez Kazoo! The exact same pattern played out last night. If this is the start of a trend, I should probably just kill myself now.
I guess that's the good thing, you really never know. You hope things will get better, so you stagger on. And pretty soon, you've cleared that obstacle and are on to the next. The lesson for today is that no matter how bad you think it is, it can always get worse.
I will probably regret saying that, or even thinking that.
posted by cmm at 9:47 AM
3 Comments:
You poor dear. You are not the only mother to feel this way. The Savvy Mom also goes through this with her son...who also doesn't sleep through the night. It's ok. I hear that swearing a lot helps! I'm thinking of you!
Thanks for the support. It's always better the next morning. Always. Except when it's worse, because you're so freaking tired. Anyway, it is a blip. As the Paul Simon song goes, "I don't expect to sleep through the night." I do, though, pretty much expect to be treated like the fool I am. Perhaps THAT resolve comes a bit later.
Having had the horrifying experience of "laying" (ie practically throwing) my kid down on the bed while yelling "FUCK YOU!" when she was maybe 5 months old and WOULD NOT GO TO SLEEP, I've spent lots of time pondering how powerful the parenting urge has to be in order to keep babies from being murdered left and right by exhausted parents. And I think if we have another, we'll foster it out for the first year... there should be organizations for that.
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