The Earring

Book 3 Part 2

We soon learned that sleep deprivation is a rite of parenthood. Undisturbed slumber is a precious commodity when there is an infant in the house. Within a few weeks, David informed me that he had the title for my first book: Is There Sleep After Childbirth.

I'm one of those people who need approximately nine hours of sleep a night to function properly. This has always been the case. When I was a child, our church would hold two-week revivals. As the minister's daughter, I had to attend services nightly without fail. Invariably by the time the revival ended, I was literally sick from lack of adequate sleep. I usually missed at least a day of school while my debilitated body recovered. Sleep was the essential ingredient for recuperation.

Thus, childbirth was traumatic for me. With a baby waking all hours of the night demanding to be fed, I wondered if I'd ever again sleep through the night. Since I napped with my son, the sleep deprivation wasn't severe enough to render me physically ill. It was erratic enough to leave me psychologically unbalanced. If my mother hadn't stayed with us for the first few weeks while I adjusted, I might now be residing in a prison for abusing, neglecting, or even strangling my child at 2 a.m. some hapless morning.

Recognizing that I would become demented if my rest was disrupted too often, David offered to alternate night feedings with me after Mama went home. Since he was a very sound sleeper, I'd have to kick him when the baby cried, and it was his turn to get up. I admit that on more than one occasion, I kicked him twice in a row because I knew he would stumble out of bed, his mind in a haze, and start feeding Joshua before he was sufficiently awake to realize that he'd done the same thing a few hours earlier. At that point, as I hoped, he was already awake and so continued to feed the child rather than returning to bed to roust me out for the feeding. Thus, I managed to keep my sanity during the first months of Josh's life.

As he got older, he learned to hold his bottle on his own. Despite warnings that babies shouldn't be left alone in a crib with a full bottle, I would take Joshua his bottle and return to bed. By that time David's cooperativeness had diminished, and so I was left with all of the night feedings.

I wrongly assumed that our son would soon grow out of his need for a bottle in the middle of the night. When he was a year old, the pediatrician told me that Josh really didn't need the night bottle. He said it was just habit and told me to simply let him cry one night, and he would soon tire, ending the habitual demand and breaking him of his nightly bottle.

The doctor obviously did not know my son. The first night Josh cried for four hours straight before I capitulated and took him the bottle he was angrily demanding. The second night I succumbed to his insistent tones after two hours. By the third night, I gave in at the slightest whimper. When I returned to the doctor for Josh's next checkup, I informed him that I would gladly loan him my son, and he could break him of his nightly habit. Otherwise, the nighttime feeding would continue until Josh voluntarily relinquished it.

By the time he was two, Josh had been weaned from the bottle, but he still awoke in the middle of the night wanting to drink. Since he used a Tupperware sippy cup during the day, I started putting a full sippy cup in the window beside his bed so he could get his own drink without disturbing Mom.

The ploy didn't work completely. It seems that when Joshua awoke, he didn't like being alone. He got his drink and then, on many nights, came into our bedroom and asked to get into bed with us. I returned him to his room and sat with him until he went back to sleep. When he approached David's side of the bed, his father obliged.

This was a child who was a restless sleeper. He would toss and turn, pull the covers askew, throw his arm into your face, and sleep from one end of the bed to the other. After the second time Josh climbed into our bed, I put my foot down. I told David he was not to allow Josh into our bed under any circumstances, so, my compliant husband simply directed Josh to my side of the bed. I soon tired of escorting him to his room. I placed a sleeping bag on the floor by our bed and told him that if he woke up and came to our room, he could stay but only if he slept on the sleeping bag.