The Pagan Heart
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September-October 2005 Issue
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The Sleepiest Baby
By Catherine M.
I never thought I'd be a parent who fought her children to sleep. Who among us does with the first baby? Images of warm, fed, snuggly babies drifting peacefully off to sleep in my arms was perpetuated by the media around me. Any crying babies were washed in lavender, swaddled and rocked for a very brief moment and then placed in their cots to drift off within a minute or two. Meanwhile the hygienically-perfect parents had time for a cuddle and conversation before heading off to sleep deeply and satisfactorily. How was I to know and understand that that image is based only shakily upon reality? Parents of young babies rarely get much sleep, let alone quality time with each other, and young babies protest going to sleep - with a great deal of vim and vigour I might add. Far beyond what such a small frame should be able to sustain. We co-slept the first nine or ten months. And there are many who will state blithely that this was our problem - that our sleep-battled children were that way because we molly-coddled them. Well, that's balderdash. Briannah was an 8-10 hour sleeper from week six, and went into a cot at ten months from her own preference. Erin, although very much a co-sleeper even now, three years later, also had no issue initially with going to sleep once the colic wore off. They both napped and slept with great ease. And I, naturally, felt it was my great parenting skills. What I learnt was that in reality it was a combination of parenting and age. They liked and needed sleep and were willing to do it since I offered no alternative. Until one day, not soon after the end of colic, both girls decided they'd had enough of sleeping in any form. Wake up call for Mummy. I'd had a week or two of peace and quiet. Decent sleep most nights - although with the whole transitioning to their cots in their room, it meant a bit of extra time calming them into sleep. But then I got 4 glorious nights in a row where they slept from about 9pm through to 5 or 6am. I began to think that the end was nigh. I learnt it is possible to feel even worse than ten months of broken sleep leaves you - get two solid nights after that and having a bulldozer run you over would leave you with more energy and happy thoughts! Because day five they began the first night of almost two months of battling sleep. One to two hours a night of fighting, screaming, crying, and in general unhappiness. A few hours of sleep, and then it resumed again. Between that time and about six months ago I didn't get another full night's sleep. Briannah settled after two months - had a routine and stuck to it. She resumed sleeping through her sister's screaming marathons, my desperate singing and rocking at 1am to try and calm Erin, my huddled figure at the foot of the cot, one hand stretched up through the bars to pat Erin's head when she stirred while I tried to cat nap for a few hours. Erin, it turned out, was susceptible to nightmares and night terrors. Neither is pleasant, although at least with the terrors she'd sleep though and recall nothing. Not so with nightmares. One of the first things she said when she began talking was after a nightmare: "Mumma gone. All gone." Knowing what her nightmares were about did little to help me work through them with her. I tried everything from reiki to dream-catchers to cleansing the room to amethyst crystals. Nothing worked. We had officially given up co-sleeping, but in reality that only meant she went to bed in her cot and then, after the second waking, we brought her into our bed (since this usually coincided with our bedtime). It would seem to soothe her somewhat, and did increase the sleep we got. But it never stopped them. Neither did putting her to sleep initially in our bed, or me taking her and going to bed when she did. My poor little girl got tireder and tireder. I got more and more exhausted. As her verbal skills increased, so did the communications about her nightmares. Once I really understood what she was dreaming, I understood what I could do. Erin's dreams revolved around two things - losing me and falling into a black place. "I lost you like last time, Mumma. You went away and it took me so long to find you. Now you're my Mumma again. I don't want you going away." "I fall into the black place and it hurts and I lost you." I don't know for certain, of course. But the sense I get is that in a past life we were together as mother and child. She died, maybe before she was ready, and it's taken until now, this life, to be reborn with me again. When I add this to the way Erin has always needed me so much more intently than Briannah and her utter terror from pretty much the first month if I left her even for a moment, it makes a lot of sense. I felt a great sense of connection with both girls while I was carrying them. A surety that we were "meant to be together", corny as that sounds. If she really did lose me in a previous lifetime, that would leave her susceptible to nightmares of repeating that now that she's found me again. So I used that knowledge in my efforts to help Erin with her nightmares. Not that I talked about some past life or something similar, but it gave me insight into what I should be saying to help calm and reassure her. It took until six months ago - her third birthday - for Erin tow reach a point where her nightmares are manageable. Now, she only has a couple that truly disturb her during the week rather than many every night. Erin's nightmares won't ever fully leave, I think. But her ability to work through them is amazing. She is a happy and confident little girl, eager to meet new people and experience new things. She finally has absolute trust that when I leave her I will return. And, perhaps most importantly to an exhausted mother, she loves her sleep - even if she displays the usual 3-year-old resistance to getting to sleep. Unless she's sick, she sleeps through most nights now, and manages to sooth herself after many of her nightmares. She sleeps with us probably 1 out of every three nights from the wee hours of the morning. But she comes in of her own volition - I can stay in bed, stirring only long enough to tuck her in next to me when she arrives at my bedside. |
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