Sleep Training, Singleness and the Dark Night of the Soul

There was a Thursday a few weeks ago that seemed a little like what Purgatory would be like.

I got up with the baby in one of those "make it happen" sorts of days, where you just feel like you can accomplish anything. There happened to be four hampers of half-folded laundry sitting in front of the TV. I thought, "To-do list item one." I'd whip this laundry into shape and be on to to-do list items 2-46 in no time.

Sometimes if I can get something relatively easy done right away, it's a momentum-booster for the rest of the day. It was 8:30.

John came home from work around 6:00pm of that same day. I had been focusing on getting the laundry done for eight hours... eight frustrating hours of picking up an article of clothes, and then putting it down to breastfeed, and then Kateri fell asleep on me. Then, I'd try to inch her down so that she was merely sleeping by me... instant angry alertness on her part.

John was the recipient of a barrage of furied texts on my part: "Something has to change. I have to get things done. She can't just sleep on me all day!"

And this is how we embarked on a new, glorious journey of sleep training.

One book I attempted to pick up right in Chapter 12 (the chapter devoted to sleep) said something to the effect of, (and this is a rough paraphrase) "Many people will try to pick up this book for this chapter alone. But if you really want to be a good parent, you will understand that you must read this book in its entirety to fully understand the important philosophies behind sleep training. Only then will you craft a babyhood, childhood and even adulthood for your child that will help them to be completely fulfilled, well-rounded, and not be traumatized from the stress which you forced upon them by sleep training them the wrong way."

Did the authors of this book truly have infants at any point? As an avid reader, it came with quite a lot of surprise to me that, in spite of making several well-intentioned trips to the library since Kateri was born, and checking out usually around 12 books a trip, there have been a total of three books read in the past 5 months. I was basically renting out shelf furniture for a few weeks, only to return it and check out more. The sleep deprivation is one thing. The other thing is that it's hard to breastfeed with one hand and hold a full-sized book in the other, AND turn pages. Holding a phone is much easier, and Reddit unfortunately usually wins over a book these days. Plus, when you have an infant that won't sleep, you don't have hours available to muse dreamily about parenting philosophies while sipping your morning coffee. You need answers now. You need someone to just hand you a mode of operation so that you can GO. You are in the trenches and on the front lines.

We settled on probably a few different philosophies and just thought we'd try them and see if they'd work. Most of what I found usable came from my sister, who's done sleep training four times, and whose kids are all temperamentally very different, so I trust that if she says it works, it works. We started with a basic "put her down drowsy," and then waited five minutes, went in to calm without picking her up, waited ten minutes, went in to calm, etc.

The first days were rough, and I didn't really know if it was working for Kateri. Hearing her crying for almost an hour and a half was unbearable. I kept asking, "Isn't there a point at which you just give up? And how do you know what that is?"

This last two weeks has come with a lot of second-guessing. I was at church this weekend, and it occurred to me that leaving Kateri alone to cry by herself in a dark room was a pretty good metaphor to how I felt a few years ago in being single.

I just wanted to be married and have a family. It was the biggest thing I'd ever wanted. It had been years of wanting it and seeing others "getting" it, and wondering if I actually REALLY wanted that, or if I was even cut out for it. Or if I wanted it, why couldn't I seem to choose that decent guy who really was a good guy, but I just didn't feel right about it? And then, deciding that maybe it wasn't the way of life that was for me, and if it wasn't to be, then what? And trying to find a different way to live that maybe didn't include being married or having a family and being content with that.

During all this struggle, I prayed a lot. Why this misery if there was no purpose for it? Because I had also read that "hope deferred makes the heart sick." And the hope itself was such a distraction from other more useful things, like helping other people. And if God was actually hearing my prayers at all, then why wasn't there a ray of light, a little bit of helpful direction, or some kind of, "Follow steps A, B, and C, and you'll find yourself moving in a direction that doesn't leave you feeling so frustrated, frail and doubtful?" 

Watching Kateri through our little omnipotent monitor, I could see (and hear) some of the same frustration in her screaming. Resolving not to go in and comfort every little cry was painful, because I knew there was no way she could really "get" why the leaving her in there alone was necessary. The reading material about sleep training that was the most powerful to me was something to the effect of, "your baby needs to learn to fall asleep on her own." And because she had to learn it, I had to give her the empty space in which to learn. So that she wouldn't need me to rock her to sleep every night, or hold her, etc.

I had to provide a space for the struggle so that the lesson could come. And I had no idea how much space she might need in which to struggle so that she could learn.

So, as to my singleness, one of the greatest sources of struggle for many years, I did end up getting what I had hoped for all these years, and it's great! I do really think there was a reason for that desire to begin with, because married life really does suit me and help me to grow towards being my best self.

But I also think that the many years of struggle in the dark helped to purify that desire from where it began, sort of like a rock that is being polished gets stripped of its roughest edges over time. I couldn't say why it had to take so long. But so much of that silence and darkness provided the opportunity for lessons to be learned that I can be thankful for, now.

The Monday about mid-week into sleep training, I had nearly decided it really wasn't going to work for Kateri. She just cried and cried and cried, and her mid-day naps left her more exhausted and cranky than those blissful days of yore when she had slept peacefully on me for hours while I watched television and ate bon bons in my pajamas all day. I had almost decided to just let her sleep on me again and not do laundry for the next three months. It was easier than having to watch her struggle and not getting her sleep needs met.

And then, Tuesday, magically, she just started to sleep shortly after being placed in her crib. She was getting it! She was learning how to calm herself down and sleep on her own without needing my help. The good that I had been afraid of her not getting (sleep) was starting to give way to a greater good: sleep independent of my help. I started to understand that the greater good sometimes demands periods of time that appear to be fruitless struggle, maybe because the process going on that is producing the fruit is invisible.

Now, it's not pure magic (because I'm guessing that's just not how parenthood works after all). She has good naps and sleep-deprived afternoons, and nights when she sleeps all the way through the night, followed by nights of two or three wakings. It's still a process, and we're still human beings figuring it out as we go.

But I guess I saw struggle from the other side and realized that maybe God isn't just ignoring us or not caring when we struggle, after all.