sleep.
The routine has shifted. We are making changes.
I love sleeping with my children. I love how safe it feels to listen to their breath in the middle of the night. I can become hypnotized by watching the rise and fall of their chests or back, lungs expanding and contracting in such a miraculous rhythm. Something I have done since the first time each of them laid down outside my body was to share sleep with them. They spent the first week of their lives sleeping on my chest in bed, while I propped up with pillows. I could sleep in the half sitting fashion quite well, as well as any new mama, and they could snuggle, slightly elevated, with their lips a breath away from my breast, my mouth resting on their barely there head fuzz. Shortly after, they got moved next to me, my arms hooked around their heads and my legs curled up so my thighs would touch their feet. I encircled them. A big C surrounding their newness. A boob always hanging out for easy access so that eventually I stopped having to wake to feed them. They were so small, little and baby bird-like. I wanted them to feel like they still had the shelter of a womb. I needed to feel like I was a fence of love, enclosing them to me. I needed it. Did they? I like to think they at least liked it.
As time passed we would separate, or bodies needing more space, and more sleeping room was made for us to wiggle and roll on our own. My back could now turn to them and when I felt little hands pawing my back I knew it was time to roll over and feed. Their backs turned to me and I would sometimes do a mini-spoon to their bodies. They would sleep between dada and me and sometimes they slept just on his side once they stopped wanting mama milk at night. As they kept growing we would find them at the bottom of the bed, lying across the backs of both our legs, a foot smashed against a check, a hand draped over my nose, or even laying horizontal at the top of our heads. Recently we have found the littlest one curled on the floor with a dog. The oldest laying on the floor against the bedroom door.
For almost a total of four years they either fell asleep easily at the breast, in the rocker, being danced to in the music studio, being driven-down or with us next to them for semi-short periods of time. Both girls are somewhat sleep ‘fighters’ (as my mama says: they just love life to much to miss it and some kids don’t need a lot of sleep), but as babes we could always work it out. Nothing ever devastated us or exhausted us. They always fell asleep and we could always spend some time at night doing what we needed. As time passed, the sleep thing did not stay the same, it did not get easier, instead it started to become a struggle. The bedtimes got later. The absolute refusal to settle down started to happen. We succumb more and more to bribes or just throwing them in the car with nowhere to go, blaring jazz and letting them fall asleep to the beat of the city lights and Miles Davis. It was the one thing we thought we were failing at. Why couldn’t we get a bedtime routine down? Why were they fighting sleep? Why was it taking so long to get them settled and in dreamland that we fell asleep with them, so tired from the hours it took to get them down, that neither one of us could muster the energy to get up again? What had we done wrong? The co-sleeping? The nursing down? Always, always being there, no matter what, at night that we made them anxious and dependent upon our sleeping presence?
As soon as my belly began to grow with this new little child, I knew that changes not only within were being born, but on the outside as well. Sula slowed down nursing on her own for the most part and began asking to peepee on her little plastic potty that had been stored away in a cupboard. She now sits down for long periods of time with her books and ‘reads’ to her beloved and cherished Baby LuLu. Mia has leaped and bounded in maturity as well; her vocabulary is becoming outrageously large, her drawings detailed and wild, her movements even more refined and brave. They began taking solace and refuge in the fact that they were sisters, arms linked, causing trouble, and even taking care. My heart began to ease as I saw how this process was going to take care of itself. We would all grow and shift and things would not seem as hard once there were five of us. We’ve been doing okay with these kids, they are walking their path, it always comes together without force or much struggle. This is good.
Everything except that sleeping thing.
Although I could feel the transformations occurring at the pace I felt comfortable with…I needed to speed one thing up: the bedtime. I think because my girls were nursed whenever they felt like it and nursed to sleep for so long and always had us in bed with them, this was going to be the hardest change to make. What was once the most enjoyable part of my day became my least favorite. I don’t mind sharing the bed with them, not at all. I still enjoy it like I did when they were fresh babes. What I mind is what our bedtime ritual has become, how sleep happens in this house. It does not make me happy. It makes me daydream about sneaking them more and more of chamomile tincture (homemade, infused for months in the highest quality and volume vodka one can buy legally) in their nighttime tea. I want to POUR it down their throats. And the more I want to force the sleep, the worse it gets. Of course.
Now, in a perfect world I would like to put them to bed, read them a book, sing a blessing song, give love and say goodnight. They look up at us, snuggle together and say, ‘goodnight’ back. I turn on a night-light. I leave (just like in the books, mama? Mia asked when she heard me joking about it with B.) My husband and I could then clean up the house, make some tea, read books, watch a movie, stretch, screw, write. But I am willing release that notion or perfection, and give something else a go. What has been happening ever since Sula stopped nursing to sleep and we stopped caving and driving them down, is that either Bill or I struggle for an hour at least , going down with them down with them, they are totally hyper, kicking, jumping, wailing their bodies around to stay awake (Bill got a nasty, nasty black eye from Sula last week when she head-butted him in her attempts to stay up by flinging her body around) and then we fall asleep before them, they wake us up, we are grumpy and tired, we try again and then whoever is the bedtime parent that night falls asleep for the night. Passed out. By the time they really need to sleep they have crosses their line, fueled up on some sort of intergalactic kid energy source and are jumping off the walls. I will spare you the screaming details if Bill is the bedtime parent. I will spare you the way we feel at the end of the night when they are passed out and we wake up at 1am, in our clothes, our teeth furry from not brushing and our bladders full. I will just simply say: We need to take back just a little sliver of our nights. Because we are only human and need a break. Because soon enough there will a new family member needing us as well.
We have consciously begun the shift. B and I looked at each other in the eyes; shook hands, knocked fists in “respect’ and nodded in a way that we knew this was it. We were going to become creatures of bedtime habit and ritual. And we would do this night in and night out until we reached some state of equilibrium, where my kids slept and we got some peace.
Being such loosely wound individuals, with a schedule side to us that resemble lazy melting molasses in the summer, this is going to be a lesson to us. We are flying by your pants kind of parents. We like the unknown. We do not shy away from ritual, as a matter of fact, ritual is our own form of schedule, but now we are combining it with good old routine. Here is how works is.
Bedtime in their bed is at 7pm sharp. Not a moment later. This happens after some encouraged quiet play; consciously we mellow the mood after dinner. Then they bath in warm water with lavender and roman chamomile oils. Music, books, stories, and both our bodies next to theirs for a long time, at least ½ hour. We rub them and massage them and hold their hands. We whisper sweetness into their ears, validate their fears and need for us to stay all night, but the reassure them we are right outside the door. Then we kiss them and then we leave. Sometimes they stay in bed for 2 more hours acting like banshees, utter monkeys, ricocheting off the walls, bouncing from the ceilings. It sounds like a circus. We ignore it for about 10 minutes and then we go back and calm them down and leave. Sometimes they come out asking for a million different things. We give them water or milk or a potty break and then tuck them back in. Not once have they fallen asleep on their own. Yet. If by 8:30 they are not asleep (like I said it hasn’t happened yet) then one of us goes and lies down again for another 10 minutes then we leave again. And that keeps happening until it gets too late then one of us stays until they (and we) pass out. So basically we are still doing what we didn’t want to do, but we are trying to stop it. We are in the process. We are weaning all of us from what has been and slowly bringing about what had better start happening soon.
I feel good about it. I don’t know how long it will take. As long as it happened well before Little Dove arrives in January, then I will be fine. The next step is to sit in a chair by the bed while they lie down. And then we move farther and farther away until they can just fall asleep on their own. I read that in some gentle parenting self-help book while I was browsing the shelves at Borders. Let’s see if it works. I never want them to feel alone. When they are scared I want them to call for us. But we have given them the tools. We have been with them. We have comforted them. We have held them. Rocked them. Nursed them. And were not going to stop. But now is the time where boundaries need to get set up, some scheduling and rules are in order. We tell them that mama and dada are a few feet away, but they need to cuddle and fall asleep on their own. We spend a long time lying next to them, preparing them for sleep, but then we need to get up and they need to learn to just close their eyes and do it. Sleep is not scary, sleep is good, very good. And now they have each other to dream next to.
Hopefully with come consistency and lots of love, this thing will work.
And of course, in the middle of the night, after Bill has woken me up (or vice versa) and I leave their bed and go into ours I sleep for a few more hours. Then I am startled. Confused. I wake up to something missing, gone. I sneak into their room, scope them up in my arms and carry them back into bed with us. Wrap my arms around them. I tell them that they can wake up in our bed for as long as they want. Because nothing is as wonderful to waking up to three other people that you love more than the world.
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(this photo is about a month old. right before mia did the hack on her hair. i would have a more recent photo but i left my very-expensive-for-me camera in a hotel in San Jose last week and well…they said they sent it back to me…and i still have not gotten it back…and nobody is returning my phone calls…so we will see if i ever get to take photo of my kids again. sigh. i should not be allowed nice things. really. seriously.)
