A Goodnight Story

Let me tell you how it was the work of Titans to get our baby, now a toddler, to sleep on his own. From his crib into our bed and from there to sleeping by himself, the journey was an odyssey. Our son was not like those good sleepers we jealously heard other parents boast about. During his first two years of life, he never once settled into a sleeping routine. Overcoming the nights, and they were an ordeal, required many sleep-drunken trips to soothe him in his crib and involved bringing him constantly into our bed. That giving in was the undiluted surrender of exhaustion. There were nights I felt like I would rub a hole through that tiny back of his, a soothing caress he would accept like a tribute to ease him back into his intermittent sleep. Just writing about it, reminds me of the delicious torment or perhaps I should say, the tormenting deliciousness of being the parent of one beautiful, but sleepless baby. The husband and I looked like non-salvageable wrecks by the end of our first year into parenthood.

The second year we girded our loins. We read some books and tried a method that made me personally feel (the husband was a bit more dispassionate) like I should have been shot for motherly negligence. Namely, we let the kid cry his little. eyes. out, while my husband held me scissor-like down on the bed and my own tears ran lava-hot to the tune of my kid's misery. It was sheer torture to not go to him but eventually, he hiccuped and sniffed his way into a restless slumber of sorts and for some weeks toward the middle of his second year, we found ourselves settling into a resigned cycle of separate sleeping. This change brought our nightly waking-up episodes down to a more manageable level.

Now, I know what you are thinking... What? he still woke up? The answer to your question is: Yes, he did. And yet, by comparison to what it had been like before, our new routine was relative bliss.

Then, I had a simply BRILLIANT idea. I purchased a toddler bed. My husband objected initially to the buy. Why? he asked, and pointing out the obvious he showed me the three perfectly beautiful and empty beds we have in our home. Our child could have claimed any one of them as his own my husband said but, I was set on my course. That convinced I was that he would more readily transition out of his crib if we put him into a bed that was made just for his size. And though I'll admit that I was the victim of motherly psychobabble, it turned out my hunch was right. Our kid (then nearly 3), loved his small bed and ooohd and aahhd over it and next thing you know, we were being dragged by the hand to revel in story-time readings, tear-less kisses and tired good nights mumbled under the muted glow of a night light, blessed Morpheus shuttering those delicate eyelids of his in needful sleep.

The husband and I broke out the champagne. It was simply miraculous. We felt like convicts who had managed a great escape. Our kid was finally sleeping. The mornings seemed brighter, our gazes less dulled and having our coffee, became again a ritual of early day enjoyment rather than a shock-to-the-system kind of necessity.

So now we are into the beginning of the chatty threes and this story is almost full told. My child had grown surely into nightly independence or so it seemed until about a month ago, when the husband and I looked upon our sleeping boy, so sweet, so quiet, it was impossible to resist the urge to enjoy him more in his slumbering state. We scooped him up and took him into our bed.

Yes, yes, I know what your disbelieving eyes are reading and can now hear what your lips are mouthing at me. I would say that I wish I could have heard you then but, that would be a lie. The disingenuous part of me thought that the following night we could go back to the hard won status quo but I intrinsically knew there would probably be no turning back. We unraveled what we had tied, disrupted what we had established, broken that unspoken tenet of toddler sleeping no-no's and we did it knowingly.

What can I say? It felt wonderful to have that warm little body cuddled into us on the bed. A pint-sized pair of arms reaching to hold me close so that I could not escape him, even in his sleep. Many times, I awoke that first night, as painfully aware of the impermanent quality of this time we share with our son as I was also of his flailing arms and kicking feet. This, is what possessed us: The vision of a baby grown into manhood, the fear of perhaps not having another child to repeat this sweetness with; a desire to slow an unstoppable process - his growing up.

It won't go on for much longer. A few years perhaps but someday soon, he won't wish to sleep with us anymore. I've made my peace with giving up my peaceful night's rest to enjoy what is left of this. I will have a lifetime for sleeping, but my little boy will not last me that long.