My Bookshelf: Baby Care and Infant Happiness

I've been recommending books to various people in my life lately, so I thought I would share the things I read, mostly the things that are useful to me in my mom life, but also books that are relevant to my other roles in this world, too. So this is the first in a series about my bookshelf.

The Baby Book, by Attachment Parenting gurus William and Martha Sears (co-authored by two of their children, one of whom is the pediatrician from The Doctors.) that has been my most useful guide through this mothering experience. It was a gift from a friend, and when I got it, it was a bit like I had just been given my reading material for a college course, as it weights in at a slim 769 pages. However, once I got over its heft and let go of my compulsive need to read books cover-to-cover in short order, this book has proved very useful. It is basically a travel-guide for children ages 0 to 2 years, and has sections on breastfeeding, discipline, and potty training. While it lacks the month-by-month guidelines found in What to Expect the First Year, it also lacks the "OHMYGOD IF YOU DON'T DO THIS EXACTLY, YOUR BABY WILL SUFFER A TERRIBLE AWFUL DEATH OR AT LEAST SOCIAL DIFFICULTIES THAT YOU WILL FEEL PROFOUNDLY GUILTY OVER" tone that the What to Expect books have. It also has dosage charts for common infant and toddler medications, which has saved me from making yet another call to the pediatrician on the weekend because the Bug has a wee bit of temperature.

Harvey Karp, MD's The Happiest Baby on the Block very seriously saved my sanity when the Bug was tiny and colicky. It's ideas may seem a bit obvious-- swaddling, swinging or rocking, white noise, sucking, and so on, but I'm the sort of person who needs to read stuff from an "expert" to really get it. (Probably the scholar in me. DH just needs to find it on the internet, and he's good.) I have just recently gotten over my disappointment that these things have stopped working.

I have 2 books that live on my bookshelf regarding baby sleep, and one will probably be a surprise for those familiar with the various positions on baby sleep. I'm too much of a liberal arts professor to just accept as gospel one idea or another, so I took a little from one and a little from another and finally sorted out the Bug's sleep a little.

The first book, particularly as it is suggested reading in The Baby Book, won't come as a surprise. It is Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution.

Most authors on baby sleep pretty much say that either you have to let the poor dear cry-it-out or you have to live with multiple wake ups and/or sleep with the poor dear. If I got nothing more out of Pantley's book, it is that it is okay not to be satisfied with either path.

Speaking of all-or-nothing approaches, my second baby sleep book is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, MD. I disagree with Weissbluth's preferred solution for infant sleep problems, which is to let the child cry it out after identifying the correct time for bedtime and naptime. What I did find useful is that the book is packed with information on the science of infant and child sleep, and by applying some of those ideas about when and why the Bug should sleep to the how from Pantley's book, we've been able to mostly assemble a sleep strategy that works for our family.

It's Worth It

So, if you're a loyal Mom Snark reader, you have undoubtedly noticed a them to my posts of late: sleep. I'm not getting it, the Bug isn't getting it, DH isn't getting it.

After a series of alternating good sleep nights and bad sleep nights, I was feeling quite bitter about having to stay up late into the evening to finish my work for the next day. Yesterday, I was working after 10pm for the second night in a row. But I realized something: it is totally worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I'd probably be a happier mama if I had a personal assistant, TA for my marking, and a maid for my house, but I make only the tiny salary of an adjunct instructor, so that seems unlikely at any point in the near future. (Although the next time that Groupon for our area is for a house cleaning service, you can bet I'm buying that sucker.) I would be a more pleasant person if I got more than 6 hours of sleep on an average night, but...

I got to spend yesterday playing and shopping and seeing my friends with my girl. There are so many moms and dads in this world who don't get to spend that kind of quality time with their kids. So if this means that sometimes I have to stay up until 11:30 to finish my work and have a small amount of quality time with my husband, it is absolutely worth it. (Our current favourite quality time is watching a great BBC comedy series called Coupling on Netflix. The only problem is that DH has laughed so loudly and heartily that he has fallen off the sofa and woken up the Bug.)

Therefore, for the season of Lent, I have decided to do two things:

1. I am participating in Sallaboutme's 46 day challenge. She's right, it is about making time. How we spend our time is a reflection of our values. What does it say about my values if I'm choosing to watch Grey's Anatomy reruns instead of doing an hour of yoga?

2. I am not going to complain, whine, bitch, moan, snivel, kvetch, carp, gripe, grouse or cavil until after Easter. This will be hard. Our society functions on complaining; it is the easiest possible small talk to make-- want to have something to discuss with your acquaintances? Complain about the government, whine about the bad service you got recently at a restaurant, kvetch about what a pain in the arse work is. But I'm going to do my utmost do do without.

I'll let you know how I do.

When is it Time?

So the big debate in the Mom Snark household at the moment is when to move the Bug to her own room. After all, we have a room upstairs that is ostensibly hers, but basically it serves as a place to change her diaper and keep her clothes. Her crib is, as it has been since we moved back into our own digs, in our room. The problem is, she doesn't sleep well. Which means none of us sleep well. Which leads to a short-tempered mama who says things like "Liszt was an asshole" when it really isn't the appropriate thing to say, even if it is true.

The sides of the debate are as follows:

Side one:

She doesn't sleep well because she can hear us there, snoring, coughing, breathing, talking in our sleep. She would settle down better from little wake ups if her two favourite people in the whole world weren't sleeping a few feet away.

Side two:

It isn't as if she has the tools to soothe herself. She's barely a year old. If she really wakes up, she'll wake up unhappy, and she may wake up just as many times in the night being unhappy and needing mom or dad's help getting back to sleep, which will simply result in multiple trips up and down the stairs and the genuine possibility of injury on the part of the party doing most of the stair climbing.

The problem is, both parties in the debate are arguing both sides of the thing. It would be way easier if we were making different arguments, but alas, we both think both sides have good points.

I have a feeling I'm not going to get a good night's sleep until the Bug is 12.

The Authors of Baby Sleep Books are Big Fat Liars

Because the truth, as I have discovered it, wouldn't sell books. It would be boring and depressing.

The truth of baby sleep is this: their little brains are developing, their little bodies are developing, and their sleep habits are constantly changing.

It doesn't matter what you do, if you let the poor little dear cry until they vomit, come console them at regular scheduled intervals, snuggle with them in a family bed, or some hybrid of the above. They're going to do what they're going to do and not consult the adults whose very sanity lies in their precious little hands as to what would make those adults happiest. Sometimes they're going to go down easily at 8pm and sleep quietly until 7am, and sometimes they refuse to even consider sleep until 10pm, and then wake up at 1am and 6am.

The one thing I have found is that snuggling seems to keep the crying at a minimum, and I just don't see how letting the Bug cry it out would change anything, except possibly to get me put on blood pressure meds. I have friends who are firm believers in cry-it-out, and they deal with the same sleep issues we do.

The problem with the sleep books is that they lead a mother to believe that she is a moral failure if her child doesn't sleep a beautific 10 hours at night and take two easy two hour naps during the day, promptly at 10am and 2pm.

I am not a moral failure. Those guys (and they are, for the most part, men) are just assholes.