Lest you think our life together is all peace and happiness, punctuated by slightly rocky moments that lead to valuable Lessons Learned, I am here tonight to tell you about 18 months of waking up at 5 am. There is no lemonade to be made of this enormous lemon. We are all tired, and being tired for so long can lead to serious grumpiness, general confusion, impaired multitasking, and if you are a toddler, many head clunks and face plants.
At Gabriel's last check up, our pediatrician suggested we move his bedtime later, endure a week or so of an exhausted baby, and then in theory, one morning we would wake up to his happy morning shouts at 7 instead of 5. Sounds great, I said. We'll do it, I said.
Yesterday afternoon, day #4 of this particular round of sleep training, ended in me shouting STOP CRYING STOP CRYING STOP CRYING STOP!!! to the saddest, reddest, rumpled up toddler face you've ever seen. I am not proud of this. In fact I feel awful about it; it was a very low point in my mothering career. In the immediate aftermath it felt like the absolute nadir.
He was so unbearable, asking to be picked up, put down, picked up again, put down again, crying, biting, throwing hard objects. I had to fetch Mike from the Aeneid to come take the boy away from his ragged, scary mama. Mike bathed him and sat with him and when I came into his room I saw the two of them calmly sitting on the glider together, Gabriel's pink cheeks and wet eyes shining. The minute my son saw me his eyes locked with mine. He slowly lifted his arms toward me and softly said: Mama.
Oh, the tears. (Mine, that is.) The vulnerability of children is downright painful to witness. I had been so mean to him, and here he was before me. Parents can be awful to their children, yet children need them and love them and form unshakable attachments. This hurts to ponder.
So there is my sad tale. The boy is exhausted. Getting down to the nitty gritty: his old bedtime was between 6 and 6:30, and he would wake up between 4:30 and 5:30. We've been putting him to bed at 7. This is night #5. Does anyone have ideas/thoughts about this? My Weisbluthian history/past success is telling me to go earlier instead of later at night, but there have definitely been nights when bedtime was as early as 5:30, and it didn't seem to alter the wake up time.
I have this intuition that the boy wakes up at 5. He just does. I'll keep at our later bedtime experiment for a few more days, but maybe a 6 pm bedtime is the best we can do in order to preserve as many nighttime sleep hours as possible.
But I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this one.
In happier news, Frances is reading. Tonight she read the entirety of Hop on Pop to Gabriel, who was captivated. About a week ago I was reading to her from Stuart Little and she asked if she could read some. She read an entire paragraph! She hit a difficult word and passed the book back to me. I was amazed. She's been doing this work kind of secretly - focused on words and letters and writing - while making it clear she does not want us to take notice or discuss it with her. Too much pressure. But now, I think she's arrived, and it makes me cry and laugh at once to hear her sounding out words with confidence.
2 comments:
First-- Frances reading is so great! I KNEW she was secretly reading all along. Why wouldn't she be? That's wonderful.
Second-- oh, I'm so sorry about the tiredness and the lack of sleep. Poor dear, poor all of you! And I know about being Mean Mommy all too well. I actually once said to Henry, "why do you have to ruin everything?" It was an awful, awful thing to say. Try not to be too hard on yourself. You are a wonderful, patient, loving mom and your kids definitely know that. Any aberation is quickly forgotten.
About the the sleeping-- I agree with you that I don't think the later bedtime will help. But I think you should try it, as you are. And then you should shift back to the early bedtime so that he is at least decently rested, even if he's waking up early. This is true of Aggie too-- she gets up at 5:45 or (on a good day) 6:00 whether we put her to bed at 6 or 7 pm. Someday he will decide to sleep later, maybe when his nap gets longer as an older toddler (this is what I'm hoping for Agatha, too). You can also try letting him cry at 5 am-- we do this with Aggie when she wakes too early, and she goes back to sleep after a couple of minutes and usually wakes up 45-60 minutes later, which is usually tolerable. But perhaps you've tried that and Gabriel just keeps crying. In which case... 5 am it is. It means that you have to be diligent about going to bed early yourself to keep your sanity. It's kind of a bummer, but everyone has to shift their schedule so that life can go on with such an early wake-up. I know that I'm never awake past 10 pm these days! For you, it might need to be 9 pm.
Amelia, thank you for your wise and reassuring words. Per usual! Mean Mommy moments are the worst. I hear myself saying such awful things sometimes and I feel like I'm in a movie about a Bad Mother who yanks her kids around by the arm in public. So thank you for helping me to shake that.
Sleep: yes, yes, I think you are absolutely right. This is what my gut is saying - that this is just where G is right now and the most important thing is that all of us get the rest we need. I resist going to sleep when I need to; changing MY bedtime is probably the most proactive thing I could do to improve the current situation. I will think as you as I brush my teeth at 8:45...
I'm giving the 7 pm bedtime 2 more nights. Then back to our old routine.
Didn't Henry wake up super early for a long time? I spoke with Edith today and she says Asa did it until he was about 3. So we're in good company at least.
Post a Comment