Sleep: The Golden Fleece of Fatherdom
I will never complain when people seem genuinely concerned or interested in something going on in my life. I will never get angry when I have to answer the same thing over and over, and I’ll never roll my eyes before answering completely. So, if you ask me a real question, be prepared to get a real answer. When people hear that we’ve just had 4 kids, even if they know me and know that we were expecting they always are quick with a question. Can anyone guess what that question is? I am sure you can; “So, you getting enough sleep?” They don’t ask my wife, they ask me, the man of the house.
I think I know why people ask this question. I think people delight in the suffering of others. They want you to feel like they did when they were pacing the floor with the screaming baby, dodging puddles of puke and emptying that diaper Genie for the THIRD time today. Everyone wants you to feel the agony of the new baby like they did and they smirk and give you a knowing ‘heh heh’ when you lament over the absence of the sandman. That may be a little cynical, but deep down, even the well-wishers who I know love and care for us, get a little chuckle when they can ‘feel my pain.’
What do I say when I am asked this question? Yes. In fact, the eBaby is pretty much like all of our other kids. They all basically slept through the night. If they didn’t, they would wake up quietly, eat, and go right back to sleep. When I tell people this, you should see their reactions. They look a little disappointed and come back with, “Wow, you’re lucky.” No advice is passed and no pat on the back for getting the sleep that would make the Surgeon General proud of you. On one hand, I could be correct in my assumptions above, or I could be totally wrong, and they were just robbed of the chance to pass some sagely advice.
Not one to let my own sagely advice go un-given, I recently told a friend our secret for how to have a happy sleeping baby, and here I am passing it to you:
For this to work, you have to start from the beginning. If you wait until the baby is actually born, it is a toss-up if it will work or not. With our first child, we made sure that it was normally pretty loud in the house. We went to Scottish Highland Games where crowd, band, and pipe noise was all around, and we listened to music loudly in the car. In essence, we got the baby used to noise so when he came out, he wouldn’t be startled by it. This has carried through to each of the other kids, since we know very well that siblings are loud. Very very loud.
It is my opinion that it is a mistake to hush everyone and make sure it is completely quiet around a kid’s nursery. You end up having a baby that will wake up at any sound and a child that will be skittish to loud noises.
Now, I’m not a pediatrician and not an expert in child psychology. I am just a dad with four kids. Four kids who sleep very well and let dad sleep well.
97- We have two good sleepers as well. We keep noise machines in there room which helps drown out anything that would wake them up. We also weren’t afraid to let them cry it out very early on (after they could make it through the night without a feeding, of course.
-Hog
P.S. check your PMs on ggse.net….you slacker. It’s not like you have anything else to do.
*Filing advice away for future*
Now, the only way you could know for sure if this philosophy were true would be to have another one and be quiet the entire time. So I’m waiting for your fifth one before I try it out.
We’ve never let a kid scream it out. We still have a two year old and a new baby in the bed with us.
Way late catching up with you…
We also had a good sleeper, and “yes”, it does seem to bother some people. It took less than 6 weeks and only a couple of “cry out” times for her to go the night.