A tissue paper bouquet has topped my daughter’s bedroom dresser for years, ever since she folded the posies together using green pipe cleaners at around 4. It wasn’t until she turned 8, though, that the flowers began dancing in the moonlight, casting wild animal shadows on the wall.
The other night Sophia was so terrified of what she saw as she tried to fall asleep that she stayed in bed and screamed — too scared to even make a run for the door.
The answer was easy: Get those flowers out of her room, pronto. Other sleep solutions have not been so straightforward.
My kids have never been great snoozers, at least not for any stretch of time. Both Sophia and her now-6-year-old brother Jackson nursed for more than a year, and moms who’ve nursed know that well-rested milk machine is a contradiction in terms.
Once my kids weaned and were gobbling tummy-filling dinners that should have kept them slumbering ’til dawn, little knifelike choppers began poking through their gums, causing them to awaken and sob several times a night.
Finally, Sophia’s teeth were all in place and we thought we would find some peace, but that’s when monsters moved into her bedroom — a problem that, unlike teething, cannot be cured with a shot of Tylenol.
Now that Sophia’s nightmares are occurring less frequently (I’d knock on wood but the kids are asleep), Jackson has been waking up every hour on the hour to cry out, “Mama, where are you?” Although Dr. Richard “Cry It Out” Ferber was my friend and salvation in the past, and although I’m often operating on 55-minutes-at-a-time sleep sessions, I can’t often deny my youngest when he lifts his arms and whimpers, “Snuggles?”
That said, I am not above exploiting whatever sleep-inducing techniques my children have responded to over the years, and I know I’m not the only one to routinely put her infant down for a nap in the mechanical swing. So why are we embarrassed about using any means necessary to get some shut-eye?
My friend Kathy was telling the story of one of her son’s first words: He said “fan” when it was time for his nap, because Kathy had placed an industrial-strength blower in his room for white noise. Kathy spent more time justifying her use of the fan than gushing over how clever her 1-year-old was. She shouldn’t have been self-conscious; she was preaching to the choir.
One desperate night when Sophia was a colicky infant, my husband popped in a CD we happened to have called A Week in Hawaii: Midnight Rainshower. The baby was out before the crickets began chirping and continued to snooze for hours. Over the years, we copied enough spare CDs to ensure that rain would be in the forecast in every room of the house, in each car, and at all the grandparents’ houses. Instead of the actual title, my husband labeled the duplicate discs with, “It’s Raining Again: One Hour and One Second of Sleep-Inducing Magic.”
Other friends of mine sheepishly admit to driving their kids around town to get them to conk out. When it comes to putting bawling babies down, I’m all for the Whatever It Takes method. But don’t listen to me — I’m sleep deprived.
Rebecca Kavanagh is an EduGuide contributing editor.