Bryan Rollins
If my 9-month-old son could journal his nightly routine, here is how I imagine it would read:
6 p.m. Fall asleep, dramatically and violently. Any attempt to keep me up even 10 minutes past this time will be met with a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions. Such attempts include baby games, energetic bath time, heavy metal albums, horseplay, and weird family sing-alongs.
Wake every 30 minutes. Go back to sleep on terms subject to change without notice.
9 p.m. Wake. Eat. Failure to eat will result in a Three Mile Island-level meltdown.
9:10 to 11:59 p.m. Sleep somewhat soundly. Sometimes. Not usually. Okay, rarely.
Midnight. Wake up. Feed. Failure to feed will result in complete, Fukushima Daiichi-style meltdown.
12:30 to 1 a.m. Party like some freaky baby rocker à la Andrew W.K.
1:30 to 5 a.m. Wake. Every. Hour. I’m only allowed to eat every three hours, but I wake up every hour just to see if mommy is too exhausted to fight feeding me sooner. ;)
5:30 a.m. Wake up refreshed and ready for the day.
And so it goes.
We typically consult “Dr. Google” regarding our baby woes. I search along the lines of, “For the love of all that is holy how do you get your baby to sleep for more than one hour at a time please dear God somebody help me.” The results link us to “horror stories” about babies who only sleep four hours at a time. Only four hours? We dream about that day.
Though actually, we’re happy with our progress. The first month of his life, our child slept no more than 30 minutes at a time, and then only for a combined total of five or six hours a day. Furthermore, he slept only one of two ways: 1) holding him outside in 104-degree summer heat so we, too, could experience the joy of what it felt like to be in a womb, or 2) rocking him (swaddled and sucking a pacifier) while humming the theme song to Jeopardy and standing next to a running vacuum cleaner.
When I told my wife I was writing about getting our son to sleep better, she (without prompting) emailed a list of things we’d tried over the past nine months.
Here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Sleep Solutions That Did Not Work
- Car rides
- White noise machine
- Soft music / loud music
- Swaddling
- Lavender essential oil
- Gas drops or Tylenol before bed
- Humidifier
- Co-sleeping / solo sleeping
- Bassinet/Pack N Play in our room
- Sleeping in his crib in his room
- Rice cereal before bed
- Increased daytime breast milk
- Earlier/later bedtime
- More naps / fewer naps
- Putting to bed drowsy but not asleep
- Putting to bed when asleep
- Doing what it says on the back of the stupid baby lotion bottle (warm bath, massage, quiet)
“There’s more,” my wife writes. “But I’ve mentally blocked them out.”
So by now I’m sure you’re wondering, “What was the solution? What finally got baby to sleep more soundly, thereby saving you and your wife from being the first parents to actually die from sleep deprivation?”
Without further ado, I present the answer:
Nothing. Nothing worked.
Not really anyway. We thought we had a breakthrough recently when weaning him from breastfeeding to fall asleep, but he still wakes up every couple of hours. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “You guys are too soft.” And maybe we are. Maybe if we let our son cry it out for 281 hours straight with no food or water he’d give up and sleep all night.
However, we’ll never know because we decided that wasn’t the solution for us. Reviewing web links and books and magazines, we’ve learned one thing for certain — every baby is different. An item on that list might work for you, or maybe you’ll try different approaches as you hit the bumps in the road of child development.
The important thing is to make choices that are right for you and your baby. When wading through the oceans of information, go with your gut. What feels like the right answer for you is, quite likely, the right answer for you. Every family has their own developmental journey, and the beauty is, you get to guide your child on the one best suited for you both. As for me, I’m going to stop writing now and snag a nap before I decide our next move.
Good luck and sleep well!
(Oops, never mind. He’s up.)
— Marshall Sanchez is the happy, albeit sleep-deprived father of a 9-month-old son.