Quitting the night shift

This is the (fourth? fifth?) night of Abe's sleep training. Whichever night it is that we wait 15 full minutes before going to him, just for starters.

Sometime mid-last week, when Abe started waking five or six times a night to nurse, I finally hit the wall. I dug trusty Ferber out and started reading it again. Though of course once you've read his book once, you don't actually read the words again. You just flip through until you find the handy chart with suggested intervals for leaving your child to cry when he wakes, and go from there. And hopefully you don't cave. The first night, I stayed in the bedroom, but Josh got up and attended to him in the night. It was a rough night. Luckily the noise didn't wake Jonah, nor our downstairs neighbors, who are in the process of sleep re-training their baby son, who is a couple months older than Abe.

Thursday I was bleary-eyed despite extra caffeine, and the mom of a classmate of Jonah's who came for a playdate suggested that I was the problem - that Abe can smell my presence in the room (meaning my milk, of course, and not the fact that my new deodorant sometimes leaves me smelling like a dirty hippie) and that's why he's staying awake, holding out for the good stuff. So Thursday night I took to the couch. An excellent couch for sleeping, says my mom, who chooses it over the Aerobed when visiting.

I waited and waited to go to bed. I kept listening for noise in the baby monitor. I couldn't seem to shut off the computer. And I definitely didn't want to lie down on the couch. Even though we bought this particular couch because it could accommodate our extra length, for naps, I just couldn't seem to settle down. There was the nervousness of the sleep training endeavor, sure, but also something else at play. I was starting to take my leave of a pretty major component of my job.

For seven and a half months, I have been Abe's night nurse. I have picked him up each time he's let out something slightly longer than a whimper, and I have soothed him back to sleep in the most primal way. (Of course, the fact that he would fall asleep within two minutes of latching on kind of escaped me until I could no longer function on such interrupted sleep.) My reward has been lowering him carefully back into the crib and watching his arms flop above his head in sleep-surrender, and then flopping back onto my bed and sinking back into another sleep cycle. Or, when I was too tired to do that, tucking him under my arm and having him sleep there.

To sleep on the couch was too frightening the other night, because I sensed an accelerating cascade of farewells: to my smiling, immobile baby who does not yet wreak general havoc (as his gleaming eyes seem to promise he may); to nursing, forever, since we most likely won't have any more kids; to our tiny roommate, who will eventually go and share a room with his big brother, resulting in (I hope, I fear) whispered flashlight conversations that neither I nor Josh will be privy to.

Yes, virtually all of my life flashed before my eyes, simply due to one night on the couch. To sleep on the couch seemed to be a certain succumbing to mortality. Even though I know otherwise, I daresay Abe slept better than I did that night.