Welcome to guilt land
You don't need a passport for Guilt Land, but you did need great big bags – smack bang under your eyes.
When I watched Trainspotting and got to the part where the Ewan McGregor character was locked in his room by his parents to get him off heroin, and he was screaming and begging them to let him out, I blithely thought, gee, bet that was hard, and then the thought was gone and I got freaked out by watching the poor dead baby crawl across the ceiling.
Of course, that was in my carefree pre-mother days. Now I am facing the terrifying prospect of teaching my 4 month old daughter to go to sleep on her own without me to rock her. I watch her kicking and crying, out of the corner of my eye because I am studiously avoiding eye contact while patting and 'shhhhhhh-ing', and she's trying to catch my eye so she can work her hormonal magic on me so I will pick her up, and I suddenly have a brand new empathy for all the parents who have to deny their children something they really want. Bugger the pain that Ewan was going through, what about poor Mum and Dad wringing their hands while pacing the corridor outside?!
I have just returned from an all-day sleep school to teach myself how to teach Anna, because although I knew the reasons about getting her to go to sleep on her own, I wasn't really getting the practice and the guilt and anxiety was getting me down, to say the least. Having convinced myself that I was, in fact, not doing the right thing but was really buggering up the bond between Anna and I, destroying her trust in me and thus destroying her ability to ever trust anyone ever again, and generally stomping all over her psyche and trashing her emotional needs which would naturally condemn her to a dysfunctional and emotionally barren adult life, I rang every help line in existence, booked myself the emergency day stay, and then spent four days rocking her to sleep in my arms, in her pram, or in my bed, so she didn't have to so much as whimper.
It was very quiet around here for those four days, but on the inside, I was very, very, quietly going insane. I was shattered. Enough to realise that she had to learn to do it on her own because I was not up to doing it for her. So off to sleep school, where I got a heavenly day's rest and people brought me cups of tea and cake, I learnt to tell Anna's different cries apart, I got lots of reassurance that I had not and will not emotionally scar her for life, and I was encouraged to stay out of her room after I'd put her down for a sleep and not get overwrought when she cried.
Except, when I got home, I found I couldn't do that last part on my own. So I've modified the plan: I stay in the room with her, sitting on a chair next to her cot. Sometimes patting, singing, or stroking, but mainly just sitting – so she knows I'm there. I don't often pick her up, and she lets me know her displeasure at this loud and clear, but that's OK. She's allowed to be angry at me, if she wants. The important thing for me was to reassure myself that she knew she was not alone. And if anyone wonders how can I just sit there and listen to her cry? I say, it's a hell of a lot less macabre than going about my life cooking my dinner, watching the TV, surfing the net, while she's in another room howling her head off.
I know this bucks the theory. I know if she learns to sleep with me there, she won't be able to sleep when she's on her own. But I started thinking, why should she learn to sleep on her own at this young age, anyway? Who decided that? She's only 4 months old. From a biologically instinctive point of view, it's probably a very good idea that she doesn't sleep on her own. Any sole-sleeping Neanderthal babies probably made very good snacks for passing sabre tooth tigers, or woke up to find the tribe had moved on without them because someone forgot to pack the baby. At some stage down the track, Anna and I will graduate on to me not being there, and if it's made that little bit harder because of what I'm doing now, then so what – I was never under any illusion that this parenting lark was going to be easy.
When I watched Trainspotting and got to the part where the Ewan McGregor character was locked in his room by his parents to get him off heroin, and he was screaming and begging them to let him out, I blithely thought, gee, bet that was hard, and then the thought was gone and I got freaked out by watching the poor dead baby crawl across the ceiling.
Of course, that was in my carefree pre-mother days. Now I am facing the terrifying prospect of teaching my 4 month old daughter to go to sleep on her own without me to rock her. I watch her kicking and crying, out of the corner of my eye because I am studiously avoiding eye contact while patting and 'shhhhhhh-ing', and she's trying to catch my eye so she can work her hormonal magic on me so I will pick her up, and I suddenly have a brand new empathy for all the parents who have to deny their children something they really want. Bugger the pain that Ewan was going through, what about poor Mum and Dad wringing their hands while pacing the corridor outside?!
I have just returned from an all-day sleep school to teach myself how to teach Anna, because although I knew the reasons about getting her to go to sleep on her own, I wasn't really getting the practice and the guilt and anxiety was getting me down, to say the least. Having convinced myself that I was, in fact, not doing the right thing but was really buggering up the bond between Anna and I, destroying her trust in me and thus destroying her ability to ever trust anyone ever again, and generally stomping all over her psyche and trashing her emotional needs which would naturally condemn her to a dysfunctional and emotionally barren adult life, I rang every help line in existence, booked myself the emergency day stay, and then spent four days rocking her to sleep in my arms, in her pram, or in my bed, so she didn't have to so much as whimper.
It was very quiet around here for those four days, but on the inside, I was very, very, quietly going insane. I was shattered. Enough to realise that she had to learn to do it on her own because I was not up to doing it for her. So off to sleep school, where I got a heavenly day's rest and people brought me cups of tea and cake, I learnt to tell Anna's different cries apart, I got lots of reassurance that I had not and will not emotionally scar her for life, and I was encouraged to stay out of her room after I'd put her down for a sleep and not get overwrought when she cried.
Except, when I got home, I found I couldn't do that last part on my own. So I've modified the plan: I stay in the room with her, sitting on a chair next to her cot. Sometimes patting, singing, or stroking, but mainly just sitting – so she knows I'm there. I don't often pick her up, and she lets me know her displeasure at this loud and clear, but that's OK. She's allowed to be angry at me, if she wants. The important thing for me was to reassure myself that she knew she was not alone. And if anyone wonders how can I just sit there and listen to her cry? I say, it's a hell of a lot less macabre than going about my life cooking my dinner, watching the TV, surfing the net, while she's in another room howling her head off.
I know this bucks the theory. I know if she learns to sleep with me there, she won't be able to sleep when she's on her own. But I started thinking, why should she learn to sleep on her own at this young age, anyway? Who decided that? She's only 4 months old. From a biologically instinctive point of view, it's probably a very good idea that she doesn't sleep on her own. Any sole-sleeping Neanderthal babies probably made very good snacks for passing sabre tooth tigers, or woke up to find the tribe had moved on without them because someone forgot to pack the baby. At some stage down the track, Anna and I will graduate on to me not being there, and if it's made that little bit harder because of what I'm doing now, then so what – I was never under any illusion that this parenting lark was going to be easy.
posted by Helen at 10:19 pm
0 comments
