My Kids Don't Sleep, But Neither Did I

I'm doing everything right. I promise, it's not me. ...Is it me?

It’s 7 p.m. I’m jamming my two-year-old’s plump feet into the leg holes of his pajamas while he sings an unhinged remix of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” His teeth have been brushed (by me) and his splayed toothbrush bristles vigorously chewed (by him). I zip the pajamas up and he cackles with delight, waving his dinosaur-face feet off the edge of the changing table.

It’s 7:30 p.m. We’re reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt for the third time. I come to the end, once again, flip past the family squashed beneath the pink comforter— “we’re not going on a bear hunt again”— and turn to the final, wordless page. “And the bear goes home to his cave,” I say, as I always do. My toddler kisses the bear, as he always does. I start to put the book down, to say “all done” and he wails.

“No more books,” I say. “We’re going to sleep. I’ll rock you.”

He won’t lie down in my arms, will only consent to sit upright, clutching his stuffed Tigger. His snowflake blanket, a spur-of-the-moment Aldi find last winter which has become his inseparable bed cover, is draped around his legs. He fusses with it, getting it just so. I wrap my arms around him, whisper “shhhhhh.” He bangs the back of his head, rhythmically, against my collarbone.

It’s 7:45 p.m. I’m singing “Hush Little Baby,” mechanically lilting through the endless roster of antiquated purchases. He stops me in the middle of the second verse, thrashing upright from where he’d slumped against my chest, and points to his mattress on the floor.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll lie down with you.”

It’s 8:00 p.m. I stoop over the floor bed, ignoring the crick in my lower back. I lay his head on his cow-printed pillow, spread the snowflake blanket over the rustle of his diapered bottom. He hands me his stuffed Pooh, gesturing for me to tuck it under my arm as I lie down beside him. His Tigger hugs my Pooh. He shuts his eyes, performatively, and it’s my cue to begin telling him about what he did today. “This morning you woke up in your cozy bed,” I begin. “You had wonderful dreams all night long, and you woke up warm and snuggly.” I omit the part where I came in to comfort him at 12, at 3, at 4 a.m. When my voice, crackly with fatigue, starts to trail off, he indignantly signs “more” and puts his face against mine until I begin again.

It’s 8:35 p.m. I contort myself into a standing position, not daring to breathe, let alone wince or allow my joints to crack. As silently as is humanly possible in an old house floored with hardwood, I slide my way to the door, twist the knob— pause, is that a whimper?— and ease my way out. The free-flowing air of the hallway is cool on my face. In our bedroom, my husband has the baby monitor on. The white noise machine is the only sound audible through the tiny speaker, a calming hum.

It’s 11 p.m. I’ve just fallen asleep myself, or am teetering on the edge thereof, when the monitor screen lights up with a wail. By the time I reach his door he’s gotten there first, pounding the particle board with his little fat fists. A nightmare? A sudden draft of cold air? Whatever it is, only I can solve it. Mama, Mama, Mama. Not the bed, only the rocking chair. Again. It feels like ages before he grows heavy and limp against my chest.

---

It’s 1999. I’ve been chased, deliriously, through a forest, tripping and falling as I run away from a giant evil mouse with huge fangs and glowing red eyes. I’m a vague approximation of myself, a caricature of a kindergartner with blond braids and feet that won’t move. The monster looms closer, and I’m awake now, screaming. My mom is there, crouched by the bed. I don’t want to tell her about the dream; telling it makes it seem more real. “Don’t leave,” I say.

She strokes my hair, rubs my back, tucks a loose and falling-apart braid behind my damp neck. “I won’t. I’m right here.”

I drift in and out, my head sandwiched between the pillow and my grubby bedtime doll named Taylor Jo. The doll smiles vacantly into the dark, small comfort in the throes of a bad dream but a comfort I’m loath to give up. My mom is in the chair beside the bed now, and as I twitch awake I can see her head nodding, chin to collarbone, falling asleep again. “MOMMY,” I whisper. “Don’t leave.”

She doesn’t. In the morning when I wake for real the chair is empty and my sister has slept placidly through the whole thing. Downstairs, breakfast will be on the table and my midnight monster will have vanished in the bright, forgetful day.

I don’t know if my mom ever stayed all night through my frequent, half-awake childhood terrors. Looking back, I hope not; with three children under five, she needed all the sleep she could get in those days. But at the time it didn’t matter to me; I was self-absorbed with fear, and she stayed while I fell asleep.

As I got older, my 2 a.m. screaming shifted to sleepwalking. One night, I’m told, I tried to unlock the front door and go outside. I never came to any harm, and that was always where the story— as my parents told it— ended. They never said anything about the drowsy hangover the next morning, of struggling through work or teaching while silently lamenting the interrupted rest of the night before. I never thought of it, through years and years of nightmares and sleep-talking and eventually the restless leg syndrome of pregnancy, until my own children tossed and turned in the bassinet, the crib, the toddler bed.

Sometimes I am embarrassed to tell other mothers how hard it is to get my kids to sleep. Everyone always wants to offer advice and help, usually well-meant, but it’s nothing I haven’t tried before. We’ve been through every routine in the book, bathed, rocked, shushed, Ferberized, turned on white noise machines and closed heavy curtains. Running through this litany of a list is tiresome, and tends to put me on the defensive. Why aren’t my children willing to sleep? I’m doing everything right. I promise it’s not me!

Except it is me. Somehow, it’s me. It’s my restless blood that runs through their veins, my tightly wired brain that shared DNA with theirs, my mysterious endocrinology that somehow, miraculously, blended with their father’s and turned out beautiful magical them. My perfect wakeful little boys, cursed with their mother’s mental wanderlust, satiated and soothed only by my presence.

I’m embarrassed to talk about it, but it’s nothing new. They are not the first children on the planet to invent three dozen excuses for getting out of bed for a drink of water or to jump from the top rail of their crib at four in the morning. They are not even the first children in the family to do this. They are continuing a timeworn tradition, and shaping me into something akin to the patient mother who stayed up to rub my back so many years ago.

Tonight, it’s my younger son who will put me through the paces of his fastidious nighttime routine. Two years ago, his older brother was doing the same. But tonight that older brother will sleep solid and stubborn in a big-boy bed, surrounded by a regiment of stuffed animals, and will not wake up until the sun has fully risen. Somehow, he outgrew that phase. Somehow, I did too.

We will get there, my toddler and me. I will say, “I love you, I’ll see you in the morning.” And I’ll know it will actually be more like 10:30 when I see him again. But I’ll say it anyway, with a little glow of hope. I’ll hold out Pooh’s fuzzy stuffy arms for a hug. He’ll nestle Tigger into Pooh’s chest. Then he’ll shut his eyes, performatively, and I’ll stroke the soft blanket against his back.

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