Infants don't want to sleep, tweens don't want to wake up

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It started as soon as we got her home. She wanted to be held. She wanted her arms and legs free, but she wanted to be held. She napped in our arms, lying on top of us, next to us. We tried to put her in a crib at night: held her until she fell asleep, set her down on the mattress. If she woke up on the way down, she’d start screaming. If we managed to get her into the crib, the moment she woke up alone, she’d start screaming.

We brought her into bed with us. This tiny baby who seemed most at home between the two of us. We all slept.

We tried the crib again after her first birthday. She’d been walking for a few months already, and would stand holding the sides of the crib. Jailer! Jailer! Bouncing up and down, chattering while we were there, wailing if we tried to walk away.

“Let her cry” was one theory making its rounds in the new-parent community.

What sadist advises something like that?

“You let her cry for a minute, then go in and soothe her,” my wife said. “But just for a few seconds. Then two minutes, then five, ten, twenty, until she learns to soothe herself.”

Who thinks it’s healthy to abandon someone just out of infancy, and then keep poking your head back in the room with the false promise of your return?

She was resolute in her misery, and the longer we left her, the louder she cried.

We tried singing. Put her in the crib, sat in the rocker next to her, but just out of reach. The same songs we sang to her in utero. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…” By the fourth song, she’d be drowsy. By the sixth or seventh, sleeping lightly. We’d have to slowly lower the volume until the last half of the last song was just a whisper, sneak out of her room the last few bars.

We’d get a few hours until she’d wake up and start rattling the sides of the crib, screaming for company, then one of us would retrieve her and we’d all settle in together.

When she could get out of the crib on her own, we started the transition to a big-girl bed. Mattress on the floor, and one of us would lie down with her, chit chat and sing until she fell asleep. Sometime in the night, she’d be standing by our bed, poking one of us to sit up and let her in. Eventually, she figured out she could just climb over and crawl in between us.

“I can’t sleep with her thrashing around all night,” my wife said.

“She usually settles down by four or five,” I said.

“I need sleep. I’m useless all day.”

There’s a certain level of fatigue that’s inevitable with some kids. If you indulge the resentment, you exhaust yourself further. At some point, I accepted that I was going to be tired for a couple of years, that my eyes would burn, that a smog of incoherence and irritability would settle over the stumbling rhythm of my life.

Once I capitulated, I slept. If she were screaming and I went to get her, I’d pull her out of the crib, hold her close, and be almost asleep by the time we got back to bed. Later, I’d wake up and she’d be there between us, and I’d take comfort in that gentle, constant prodding and kicking. The space between us felt empty when she wasn’t there.

“She has to start sleeping in her own bed,” my wife said.

“She will. Another year or two, she’ll be too embarrassed to be crawling into bed with her parents. You’ll miss it then.”

Somewhere around eight, the midnight visits became less frequent, and finally stopped. She’d come in some mornings to wake us up, to lie between us and tell us what dreams she’d had, or what she had lined up for the day. On weekends, it was a beeline for the couch and the remote.

By the time she was nine, we had to go in and wake her up.