At our house, night is meant to be a quiet time to relax and rejuvenate. Allen and I like to snuggle up on the couch with a bowl of Dreyer's Slow Churned Ice Cream (French Silk is our favorite flavor) and catch up on our DVR shows. Sometimes we do other activities too. Allen will play video games and I will make jewelry or read books and magazines. It is also the time when I blog. Lately, little of this has been happening and I am seriously missing our "adult time."
My projects are mounting. The blog is being neglected and Allen and I are slowly losing our sanity. We are the parents of a child who will.not.sleep. Is it my fault? Probably. I held him too much, I nurse him to sleep, I didn't teach him how to self-sooth, blah, blah, blah. I've just been a firm believer that you cannot snuggle your baby too much or give him too much love and attention. Now this the mantra I repeat to myself as I am heading upstairs for the 4th time a night to put him back to sleep.
It all starts out well enough. We sit down for dinner around 5PM, eat, clean up and play a little. Then around 6PM Allen heads upstairs with Samuel for bath time. The lights get turned down, Samuel's CD of instrumental lullabies is turned on we all start to get quiet. After the bath we get him ready for bed and read stories. It's a relaxing and thorough routine, designed to induce sleepiness. Usually it works pretty well and he drifts off to sleep as I sing lullabies and nurse him.
After he is asleep, I wait an appropriate amount of time before I sneak out of his toddler bed, silently open the door (while blocking all traces of light with my body), scale the safety gate and carefully close the door again. I wait outside to make sure the my cub has not been disturbed before inching towards the stairs. Over time I have learned exactly which stairs and, more specifically, which part of each stair, creaks the most, so I creep down moving from one side to another with the precision of a ballerina while internally cursing any sound the stairs do emit. Once downstairs I can finally breathe and the giant knot of tension (caused from the stairs choreography) begins to dissipate.
I join Allen and we start to enjoy our time together. Like clockwork, Samuel wakes up after 45 minutes. I head upstairs and start the whole process over again. I usually do this at least 2 additional times before Allen and I are ready to head up for bed. It's exhausting. Recently we have let our baby bear growl a little before I go back up. I really hate letting him cry it out, and at his age, I don't think it will work anyway. The most I have been able to tolerate is about 15 minutes. He stands by the door and cries, "Ma-ma, Ma-ma, I need Ma-ma!" He just repeats this over and over and over until I feel so guilty and beaten that I am crying too and rush up to save him. All he wants is to snuggle with his Mommy, is that so awful?
Someday Samuel will be all grown up then Allen and I will have so much alone time together that we will probably get sick of each other's faces and someday we will sleep peacefully through the night without interruption. Someday....
