Science- My daughter slept in her crib for her first year of life without much resistance.
- Something changed as she got older, and now I have to rock her for hours to get her to sleep.
I had been rocking my daughter Alma in my arms for two hours in the pitch black of my bedroom when my patience finally cracked.
Desperate for a break from parenting, and concerned for my exhausted baby, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. For four months, every night with my daughter had been a battle. I dread bedtime and the stressful and frustrating saga it has become.
Alma's father — my partner of seven years — and I have never been comfortable with cosleeping, not just out of concern for our daughter's safety but also because we hoped to maintain some personal space in our lives. For the first year of her life, Alma slept comfortably and with very little resistance in her crib. Then, in late September, she simply began refusing to be put down to sleep. We researched sleep regressions, but there wasn't a logical explanation. She just wanted to be held.
We needed sleep — and did anything to get some
Our bedtime routine became exasperatingly complex. We've tried cry-it-out and camping-out sleep-training methods, but she ended up back in our arms. We tried a combination of white noise and a lullaby playing softly on YouTube. We got rid of the lullaby but added a stuffed animal, which she briefly tolerated before tossing it out of the crib. Some nights, she sings and chatters to herself in the dark for hours while we lay in bed a few feet from the crib, wide awake and in despair.
To get a little sleep ourselves so that we can function during the day at our respective jobs, we have become occasional and reluctant cosleepers.
On the evening when I finally broke down, I took Alma upstairs at 7 p.m. and braced myself for an hours-long wrestling match that would end with me folded into the recliner, struggling to stay awake while she snoozed.
First, I held her as she drank her bottle, rocked her until she fell asleep, and tried to gently lower her into the crib. She awoke the moment she touched the mattress, so I laid her down next to me in bed and tried to cuddle her, but she wriggled, kicked, and rolled around the bed singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to herself. We moved back to the recliner, and I pressed a large pillow against her back to help her feel safe and comforted. Still, she fought me.
I tweeted about my struggles
In a moment of desperation, I posted a tweet, hoping to connect with other parents raising sleep-resistant toddlers. Nearly 1,000 other parents reached out to me, not with advice but to commiserate and offer words of encouragement. They gave me the courage to keep going, even on those days when I had been parenting for 12 hours straight and felt like running out of my house screaming.
I am desperate for my daughter to get a good night's sleep, and it's not just because I am tired. Sleep is essential to a toddler's development; without consistent rest, she won't grow and thrive. At her last check-up, thankfully, Alma's doctor deemed her perfectly healthy — yet we feel constant anxiety over her well-being.
These days, Alma finally falls into a deep sleep about 11:30 p.m. — whether she's lying between her father and me, in our arms, or in the crib, we don't care as long as we are all getting some rest.
Raising a sleep-resistant toddler challenges every ounce of my patience and pushes me to my limits. Even if she never sleeps well again, I will love her unconditionally — but putting her to bed is my hardest job as a parent.