Why I Am a Tad Cranky These Days

I have lately come to realize that I am the Barack Obama of baby care decisionmakers. The choices Hubby and I have made tend toward the more liberal side of the spectrum, but not so far off the grid that we fall into Dennis Kucinich territory. We overthink everything without, thankfully, approaching Hillary Clinton equivocation. And we end up, like Obama, making heartfelt, lefty, but far from radical decisions.

Our record speaks for itself. Certain we wanted our son close by while we slept but unable to commit to the extreme of bed sharing for fear of rolling over and suffocating our newborn while as we shared sleep, we opted for the conveniently compromising co-sleeper. The baby sling was a wondrous thing in those early days when any fresh air was a balm to my withering sense of self, but, frankly, there were plenty of times when the stroller suited both me and The Boy just fine. We might even have gone for circumcision if we had uncovered a shred of evidence that it imparts a health benefit or two.

In short, if there's a middle path – preferably one that brings us close enough to the natural-way, selfless style of parenting to lend us a touch of cred – we're on it.

There is, however, one area of decisionmaking that simply does not lend itself to such a satisfying resolution. Sleep training.

I can hear everyone who remembers those years between infancy and "don't touch me, Mom" shuddering. It is a decision without a middle road. Either you let your child cry while you match him tear-for-tear in the next room or you put him in bed with you and try to pretend that your partner really doesn't mind sleeping on the day bed in the office.

To sleep train, or not to sleep train? That is, oh yes, the question.

Our recent bout with that seemingly lifelong conundrum came at the end of a daycare cold which brought with it a hacking cough. The same cough I have, in fact. The same cough that also wakes me up in the middle of the night. Except I am content to give snoring Hubby a kick, roll over, and go back to sleep.

At nearly 11 months, however, The Boy is old enough to know that he does not want to roll over and go back to sleep in his lonely crib. He has a fuzzy recollection of those nights a few weeks ago when an ear infection forced Mommy to prop him up on pillows in her bed (formerly known as her and Daddy's bed, but now Daddy is sleeping on the day bed in the office). And The Boy wants that lovely arrangement again.

The Boy came to this conclusion in the middle of my REM sleep. This is not a good time to discuss with one's partner the merits of Ferberizing versus letting the babe into bed so we can all just sleep and worry about creating a bed-sharing monster some other time.

Ferberizing was not a method we embraced easily. The Boy was a phenomenal sleeper as an infant, generally awakening only once a night (though not always going back to sleep particularly promptly). Then, suddenly, he was five months old and he was awakening every two hours. I can tend to a baby once a night with an impressive degree of cheerfulness. A second nighttime rendezvous renders me a bit less likely to coo in delight with him. By the third time, you will spot me tromping down the hall with him held like a football under my arm muttering, "I will tend to your basic needs, but I will not be nurturing, god damn it!"

A week of two-hour blocks of sleep got me on-line reading about Ferberizing. And what I discovered was that there are a great many parents out there who agonize over it. Probably, it is the most agonizing decision we make in that first year because it is so starkly a matter of whose needs you put first – your beloved darling's or, sad to say, your own.

But I also found that, for some families, it works. And you don't know if yours is one unless you try. So we tried. And it worked. I never had to hold my breath and fight back tears as I stared at a clock for more than five very, very long minutes of screaming from my child. And in no time at all we were experiencing, dare I say it, eight uninterrupted hours of sleep.

But, of course, nothing lasts when you are tripling in size and brain matter every few months. And so, this week, it was time to decide yet again.

Ferberizing, I discovered last time we went through this, is a lot more traumatic at nine or ten or eleven months than it is at five. Because at nine or ten or eleven months your child gets angry. Very, very angry. Angry enough to cry until you recognize the error of your ways.

Still, I am haunted by an article in the New York Times that I read during my pregnancy. It described an epidemic of nighttime bed shuffling as children for whom no sleeping boundaries had been set take over their parents' beds at night, forcing the adults to curl up in their children's rooms to sleep under the princess canopy by the glow of the Spiderman night light.

So when I heard the cries at 2 a.m. Saturday night, I rolled myself out of bed and across the hall. I put my hand reassuringly on The Boy's back and said, "It's okay, Mommy's here."

Plainly, it was not enough for The Boy that Mommy be "here." The point was for Mommy to be here holding him in her arms, a Ferber no-no.

The Boy reached out for me, grabbing at my wrists, hoisting himself toward me, banging his forehead on the bars of his crib, while I repeated in an increasingly clenched voice, "Mommy's here. It's okay."

Finally, it wasn't okay because I really had to pee. So I left him. And he screamed.

I returned, we replayed, I left and stared at the clock while he screamed.

And eventually it worked. The Boy slept and I lay awake drowning in my own guilt.

The next morning I muttered to Hubby, "Should we just put him in bed with us if it happens again tonight?" and Hubby said, "I don't know."

So I did.

It was not, I am sad to report, the idyllic solution for which I had been hoping. The Boy kicked me in the stomach. He tried to climb the headboard. He bounced his butt up and down so strongly the whole bed shook. And I concluded that the book I read claiming that mothers and babies both sleep better when they sleep together is full of crap.

It is possible that The Boy agrees, I reckoned at five 0'clock this morning when the house had remained silent all night. Maybe he figured out that sleeping with Mommy isn't all it's cracked up to be.

He did wake up fifteen minutes later and it was a struggle to convince him that 5:15 is a terrific time to get a little bit more sleep, but that hour or so we snoozed quietly together was . . . heaven.

So what will I do if we wakes up again tonight? I will remind myself that all children walk eventually and drink out of a cup when they're ready and, yes, sleep in their own bed, even if it takes until puberty.

I may not always like my decision to abandon Ferber for a nighttime of stomach-kicking and ear-grabbing. But it is my decision, and as long as I make it with love it's the right one.

Besides, it's always possible that tonight will be the night he stays asleep.