When Monica and I woke up last Friday morning, we
realized that all three of our children were in our room with us. This is rare. In fact, this is the first time this has happened.
It’s not at all unusual that our oldest daughter, MK,
ended up here. When she was
sleeping in her own bed, we had developed a ritual of singing to her (we adapted
a song that our congregation uses for baby dedications, inserting family
members’ names as a way to remember them) and listening to music (I highly
recommend Lullaby: A Collection,
featuring an eclectic mix of artists including Bobby McFerrin, Ladysmith Black
Mambazo, Judy Collins and Deep Forest), which helped her fall asleep and stay
asleep. Now she shares a bed with
her brother, and the bedtime custom has become that we read books together and
then either Monica or I will lie down between them until they drift away. And every night almost without fail,
MK makes the midnight crossing from their bed to our room. I don’t know if sharing a bed with BT has
anything to do with this nightly travel, or if it’s a combination of separation anxiety and a
fear of the dark, but there it is.
She used to crawl right into bed between us, jostling us awake, and
pasting herself against one of us.
I didn’t mind it so much—and knew I'd miss it when it was gone—but it did
disturb Monica’s sleep. Now we have
a floor bed set up for her next to my side of the bed, a sleeping bag on top of
a thin air mattress, and it works great—she comes in and lies right down
without waking us.
BT has been a great sleeper ever since he began
sleeping in a big bed.
Occasionally he will wake up in the middle of the night needing a drink
or comfort, but usually he is able to sleep the whole night through without any
interruption. Recently, however,
he has begun following his sister’s example, making the trek to our bed,
nestling down between us, pasting himself (to me, usually), and unsubtly demanding my
hand ("Hand!") so he can hold it and aggressively knead it, entwining his fingers in
mine. This somehow works for him—it's become a bit annoying for me, but, again,
I know I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
As infants, both MK and BT had a very hard time
getting to sleep, and staying asleep.
I used to get a good lower body workout, holding them (not at the same
time) while doing deep seat squats to try and settle them down. I would also put them in their car
seats and swing them in large, sweeping arcs for 20 minutes or more, making mental note of the effects of centrifugal force, to try and
send them off. This often worked,
but then it was a performance of carefully choreographed moves of diminishing
degrees of contact to transfer them to the crib, where, inevitably, once the
last tenuous physical connection was cut, they would somehow realize that they were alone, wake up screaming, and inaugurate a repeat production. I
began writing a song for BT which opens up with the line, “Waiting for
the arm to fall”—as I would hold him and bounce him, his fingers would slowly
relax their desperate grip on mine, and his arm would gradually slide away and
hang in the air. Then it was a
slow count to 60 and I could begin entertaining the idea of laying him down.
JM by far has been our best sleeper. She settles down easily and has even
gone to sleep on her own in her crib, with a minimal amount of fussing. The reason she ended up in our bed last Friday
night was because she had a cold.
She went out pretty well initially, but then woke up crying several
times because she was congested and having a hard time breathing. We eventually just brought her in to our
bed to lie between us so we could quickly comfort her as needed.
The next night, JM slept soundly in her crib, and we
were back on schedule.
