Sleep training is not for the faint of heart. It's also not for everyone.

I've mentioned in the past (here and here) that Daryl and I ended up with a horrible sleeper for a daughter; when Margot was a newborn, I answered her chirps and her whimpers and her cries as quickly as I could get to her, and she was always satiated by breastfeeding. It was what she needed, and I was beyond happy to do it for her. To this day, if she asks, I will provide; nursing her is my joy, and I don't plan on stopping until it feels right; and as yet, it doesn't.

When she transformed from newborn to sweet, squirmy little baby, though, our habits didn't change. I knew from things I'd read or been told that maybe I didn't need to keep up with such steady nightly feedings, or that by this age or that age the contents of her stomach at nighttime should be enough to last her through to the morning, but never at any point in time did I feel even remotely certain that her mid-night cries for milk should go ignored; because who was I to say whether or not she was legitimately hungry or not? Granted, there came many occasions on which I'd put my foot down - I'd be in the throes of such debilitating exhaustion and I'd say to Daryl, "I can't do this anymore. We need to sleep train her." But with all the gusto I had mustered up, talking about it and following through with it were vastly different. And as we quickly found out, I can't stand weathering her cries.

We started sleep training her in the beginning over naptime rather than nighttime, and I did some reading and research, but generally attacked the process with a mish-mash of various techniques. I didn't know what I was doing, and I wasn't confident whatsoever. I tried sitting at her bedside, although even with room-darkening curtains, white noise, and pre-nap nursing she just laid there and screamed at me. We shed tears together, and I questioned altogether why I ever thought this was a good idea. Hints of success waxed and waned, and I became a veritable lunatic documenting every single thing that happened, and every single wink of sleep that she got. I kid you not - I kept track of everything. I still (kind of) do - I have notes in my phone that span over a year and a quarter; and although they've gotten far less detailed and I've gotten less diligent, I can't see myself kicking the habit until Margot starts sleeping through the night.

Anyhow, I digress. Here lie Exhibits A through D, demonstrating a fairly roundabout curve of how well sleep training ended up going back in those early(ish) days last summer. These are some particularly noteworthy moments - little snippets from four different days, out of close to a million of them, I'd say - and please excuse the swears. Also, don't bother telling me your madness has never brought a slew of cuss words flying out of your mouth like confetti. This happens to be an example of me reigned in.

So eventually, if it's not obvious herein, I gave up. You might have noticed how heavily me-centric these notes are - Daryl wasn't involved in this at all. Not because he wasn't absolutely and wildly DESPERATE to have his hand at it, but because a) he was always at work during naptime, and b) my maternal instincts offered a staunch HANDS-OFF-I-DON'T-CARE-WHO-YOU-ARE ruling when it came to both my limits and Margot's. Daryl has an easier time letting Margot cry, whereas I can only withstand it for so long before I'm clambering up to her room on all fours. And in the later days, when I eventually conceded and asked him to help - acknowledging there wasn't a bone in my body that wanted to do this alone any longer - there were many a night were I would either be yelling and swearing at him, or he'd literally be holding me back, talking sense into me, to keep me from running into Margot's room and undoing everything we'd been working on. 

Can I say that IT. WAS. HARD. ? That maybe I died a little bit? I hated every minute of it. And here we are over a year later, and I can't tell you with any certainty whatsoever that it was worth our time. Actually, I should give us some credit; even though Margot still generally sucks at sleeping throughout the course of a night, our efforts at sleep training revitalized naptime - and in the long run, eventually bedtime itself. Those long days trying and failing at getting her to be alone in her crib did pay off, in that they taught her that not only was she in a safe place, but she was capable of falling asleep without a boob in her mouth. It was a rocky trip up a steep mountain, but I am ever so grateful that that hardship led to her putting herself down for naps after some chit-chatting to herself rather than screaming so passionately that I'm surprised our neighbors weren't knocking on the door to make sure I was still alive.

The moral of this story? I don't like sleep training. I can't tell you whether I agree with it or not. And nobody but nobody is going to know better about your circumstances than you are. Whether your niece or your best friend's baby or even one of your other pre-existing babies were sleeping through the night after three nights of dreadful Crying It Out, or whether you're like me and spent months not knowing what was up or down and came out with a kid who kind of gets it but kind of basically doesn't, please remember that you're okay; that you're going to be okay, and that you currently are. Seek help if you need it, and rest on your laurels if that's what you need to do. So what if your baby is utter crap at sleeping? You know autopilot? That system that kicks in and makes your legs magically walk into a pair of pants and your hands mysteriously pick up your glasses and put them on your face in the morning (maybe right side up, or maybe upside down. I did upside down once.)? Autopilot. It's there for you and it works and it gets you through all those days that you look back and don't have a single memory of. 

So don't ask me what I had for dinner last night, because I guarantee I don't remember whatsoever, but at the very least I hold my head high knowing I'm doing everything - literally everything - that I can possibly do for my daughter and we're both better off because of it. 

Trust your gut. Read as much as you feel comfortable doing, listen to the advice of others, but take everything you collect with a grain of salt. It can't be stressed enough that nobody knows your child the way you do, and nobody is going to have a better handle on what your baby needs than you. Your methods and tactics and habits do not ever have to measure up to anybody else's. Those other perfect-sleeping babies are not your baby, and that's a good thing. Because they're really boogery anyhow.

My apologies to the departed

This past weekend we took a whirlwind trip to the southwestern corner of the Minnesota to attend Daryl's grandma's funeral. It was a bittersweet weekend, but we filled it with family and parks and puppies.

puppy!

The service itself was a lovely tribute to Grandma Olive, and the church was inundated with her family and beloved friends. I didn't spend a whole lot of time sitting down listening to any of what was being said, though, since I was on toddler duty. And overall it was fairly unremarkable, up until we drove to the cemetery for the interment and Margot pulled an almighty stunt. She snuck off a few feet away from where we were all standing, leaned down on all fours hovering over somebody's gravestone, and spat out a mouthful of chewed-up banana onto it. Daryl and I both noticed it, and were horrified, albeit we couldn't stop laughing. Of course we scolded her, stifling our laughs, and then inadvertently had to scold her again when not ten minutes later she wandered back to the same gravestone and found a little bit of leftover banana on it and smeared it all over the place. Insert absolutely mortified emoji here.

We spent one night in a hotel, which I can effectively say was a nightmare consisting of sharing a bed with a toddler with a horrible cough and an inability to lay in the same position for longer than 60 seconds. She screamed and cried when we tried putting her down in her pack 'n play, so after an hour we caved and brought her to bed with us; and nary did I get a wink of sleep thanks to the non-stop jabs of her knees, elbows, feet, hands, and little bum flying around everywhere. I don't for the life of me know how people bed-share with their kids. I was up all night.

No matter, though, because on the drive home she went from this to this in about three seconds flat and she stole my heart with how adorable she is and suddenly it didn't matter that I hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the night before. 

No I'm just kidding. It sucked. She's cute, but nobody's THAT cute.

Jealousy and freedom and drinking during the day

This week has felt overwhelmingly like this. 

I'm on the upswing at this point, but I was on my period at the same time that Margot got a cold and thus stopped sleeping - so I wasn't sleeping - and what might have otherwise just been a routine string of crappy daily situations somehow morphed into the perfect storm of me feeling overdramatic, whiny, bitchy, and short-tempered. Lucky for Daryl, though, partway through the week I did actually realize what a turd I was being, and apologized. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm just having a really shitty life." (Overdramatic. I told you. There's an Ebola outbreak and the Israel-Palestine conflict is so horrible it's too great a weight to bear and I'm complaining that my life sucks because there's a toddler chucking little pieces of spaghetti all over the dining room and I don't know what I want to eat for dinner because nothing sounds appetizing. REALLY? REALLY.)

But as I was saying - I'm over the hill and picking up my pieces. I've decided to make a change in my life. I have this one great friend who's said how remarkable she finds it that I possess this ability to make a sweeping permanent change when I decide on some way in which I want to change my life or otherwise strive for any particular goal. I had never realized this about myself whatsoever, but there was something incredibly empowering about having someone point this out to me. And so, here I'm going - I'm taking life by the horns (the horns? The tail? What's the expression again?) and putting an end to my lethargic nature. 

Last night I registered to attend the upcoming Birth Without Fear meet-up in Minneapolis. I realized shortly thereafter that this conference, this opportunity for me to spend a day out of the house sans toddler, will be the first time I've ever done anything of the sort since having Margot. I'm not saying I've never had a sliver of me-time in the last year and a half, but realistically I am saying that I've never done anything more than slip out of the house for a couple hours after she's gone to bed at night, or run out to get my hair cut, or zip out to rob a bank real quick... that sort of thing. I'm always back in time to nurse my girl, feed her a meal, take her to go grab groceries, or whatever's left on the day's agenda - the only times I've ever spent an entire day away from her are when I go to work. It's embarrassing admitting this - but it's also incredibly freeing realizing that next Saturday I'm totally going to be doing cartwheels out of my house while wearing a dress with poofy sleeves. And I'll obviously have lipstick painted all over my face. If you hear shrill, maniacal laughter, don't freak out. It's just me on the loose.

I should have prefaced all that with an explanation as to why I'm always stuck at home with our girl. I think I've written already about how Daryl and I made the decision pre-baby to adjust our work schedules so that we wouldn't have to rely on daycare services in order to juggle careers and child-rearing. We're both incredibly lucky to have jobs that allow us to perform all kinds of scheduling acrobatics so that either he or I ends up being home with Margot on any day of the week. And as it turns out, it's equal parts blessing and curse - because what we never really thought to factor in is the fact that doing that means that never in the course of a week will we ever be home together. Either he's at work, or I am. We don't have weekends. We've got evenings, sure, but Daryl's a social butterfly and I'm a homebody by nature so he inevitably does all kinds of gallivanting around town while I'm happy at home watching tv, playing on vine, and perusing Instagram. It works for us. 

...Except when it doesn't. Except when I every so often get swept away in a wave of jealousy so strong I want to yell and cry and throw in the towel altogether. I'm always vocal about it, mind you - I'm an open book when it comes to my thoughts and feelings and ideas about how I'm feeling - and I should also say that Daryl is the reigning King of encouraging me to do whatever it is I want to do, and to pursue the things that make me happy; the crux of the issue is me. It's me never totally knowing what it is I want, never really feeling like I know just the thing that'll make me feel free and fulfilled and as though I've had a sufficient break from my chaotic and overwhelming days with a teething/busy/cranky/happy/antsy/squirmy toddler. 

So this jealousy picks me up by the scruff of my neck and throws me against a wall - and it always catches me off guard, because by nature I am not a jealous person whatsoever. I don't struggle with insecurity or low self-esteem, and I'm happy and proud that Daryl and I have a relationship wherein we can both feel free to do our own thing at our own pace. But it turns out that there exists a level of social jealousy within me that is fierce and strong in spite of my introversion. I'm sure it has a lot - if not everything - to do with the fact that I don't live in my hometown and I'm not surrounded by family or lifelong friends in a familiar community, the way he is; but nevertheless, I end up being so ridiculously conflicted between wanting to give Daryl everything and wanting to hoard it all for myself. It's again another example of how I end up giving into my role of Mother with far more ease than I ever allow myself to be Self. Because it's just easier not to, even when it's actually so much harder. 

So next Saturday is monumental for me. Not only will I be able to spend the day marveling over the stories and experiences of like-minded women - women who've felt and experienced so much of what I have - but I'll be able to do all the things I can't normally do when I'm on baby duty. Like juggle torches and drink cocktails in the bathtub. 

They'll have bathtub cocktails there, right?