I’m Losing My Mind While Sleep Training My AP Toddler

At my daughter’s six month checkup, my pediatrician gently suggested we start using a crib.

”The older she gets, the harder it will be for her to leave your bed,” she told me. I nodded, agreeing with her, but knowing I was perfectly content with bed sharing at the time””and my husband and daughter were, too. Why wouldn’t she be, anyways? She had endless milk on tap, all night; the warmth of my body beside hers and the joy of rising at the same time, smiling into each other’s faces.

How could I have predicted that the quality of everyone’s sleep would take a serious downturn when she turned one and a half? I had just blissfully assumed that we’d all snuggle together until she was three or four and ready to have her own sense of independence. But no. Now that she’s big, she arches her back and kicks me in my nether regions, she rolls up against my husband and forces him to the edge of the bed, and now that she’s teething again she nurses Every. Damn. Hour. I wake up with the wrinkled nipples of an 80-year old aboriginal woman. This has to stop.

So we bought my daughter a mattress and placed it near the foot of our bed. What follows is my raw, visceral experience with her first week of sleep training. If you’re the super empathetic type, I suggest reading with a mug of some caffeinated beverage in hand.

7/17, Night One

I wiggled down next to her on her mattress, making the damn thing squeak and squawk and wondering briefly if there was a weight limit to it. I nursed her. After both boobs, she fell asleep and I pranced off to play Candy Crush in my office for a bit.

Half an hour later, baby woke up””I tried nursing her again, but she sat up and did her ”all done” sign. I made it darker in the room, put her back down on her back, and sat there petting her while she cried her eyes out. She did her forced, tantrum-y cry (it sounds more like an adult doing an impression of a baby than an actual baby””each ”Wah” enunciated). Ten minutes of this.

My husband put on some soft music and I tried nursing her again. Her eyes stay open, she sits up and does ”all done” again. Awesome. So we all stay up until eleven. Then we all went to sleep together in our adult bed. So mostly fail.

7/18 Night Two

I was tired from rock climbing at the gym, and when I got back home, Evie was ready for bed right away. Blame it on the distraction from my post-workout high, but without even thinking about it, I nursed her down in our bed. She slept well, but started tossing and turning around four a.m., and my sleep was completely broken from then until when I woke up at 6:30. Oops.

7/19 Night Three

(I logged nothing for this night. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I’ll leave that up to you to decide whether that’s good or bad, but my track record thus far would suggest it’s bad.)

7/20 Night Four

I nursed her to sleep on her mattress and she slept for a solid couple of hours. Then she woke up and I tried to put her back to sleep there, but she kept flinging herself over me to switch from boob to boob. I caved and went to bed myself, bringing her along into the adult bed. Sleep.

7/21 Night Five

Today, my husband admits he’s getting really uncomfortable in our bed, and maybe he’d just rather sleep on the couch forever. I feel awful, and want to get this transition thing underway for realz. I nurse baby to sleep on her mattress, but she wakes up when I move (crinkle, crunch, crinkle. That damn thing is DEFINITELY not built to support my 120 pound body).

We keep her up until 10:30ish, then I put her back to sleep on her mattress. Miraculously, she sleeps””for a solid five or six hours””in her bed. My husband and I actually got to have sex in our bed, at night, and we fall asleep cuddling. This never happens.

7/22 Night Six

Baby finally fell asleep after a long, long, long hour of nursing from 8:30 to 9:30. She slept until about eleven, and that’s when shit really started to go down.

I nursed her back to sleep at eleven, and when she was done, I climbed into the adult bed. Just as I entered that delightful mental place where my body was completely relaxed and my thoughts were transitioning into dreams, she cried.

Reluctant, I hauled my body out of that lovely near-dream state and joined her on her mattress again. I put her back to sleep.

I crawled back into bed. WASH RINSE REPEAT””I entered into that near-dream state again and she cried.

Fuck it, I thought. I’m bringing her in bed with me because I can’t effing do this all night.

She fell back asleep. But every time I was just settled enough to really doze off, she wanted more boob, so I had to keep semi-waking up to haul her toddler self from one side of my body to the other. Oh, and here’s a bonus! She’s going through another biting phase, because Yay Teething, so each time we got all situated and un-mummified ourselves from the tangled covers, she decides to give my nipples a hearty CHOMP.

I don’t know about you, but when someone’s trying to bite off my entire areola, I don’t sleep very well.

My body and mind will only take so much. So when she falls asleep enough to carry on alone, I put her in my spot and climb out of bed. At 2:24 a.m., I went into my office and read Atlantic articles to distract myself from feeling like a total fucking failure.

I never, ever thought I would be here””hating both bed sharing and nursing. I hated them both at that moment. I found myself thinking tomorrow I would force-wean her and lock her in a room in a crib and let her cry until she can’t cry anymore. I am not a good person on zero hours of sleep with nipples that feel like they’re hanging on by single tendons.

So roundabouts 3:00 a.m., I found myself musing on attachment parenting. I wondered why it meant so much to me. I realized I have always been the type to martyr myself for the good of someone else, even for other people who really didn’t fucking deserve it (read: ex-boyfriends). I should have known that if I would do extreme, stupid things for people who didn’t deserve it, that I should have been really, really cautious about what crazy shit I might try for my own child’s well-being.

I wondered if I was just being impatient. I knew sleep training wouldn’t be an instant thing, but I feel irresponsible for waiting until my sanity was whittled away to a hair’s breadth to start this process. Oh, and I’d been trying to quit smoking that day, too. What kind of masochistic psycho does this to oneself?

7/23 Night Seven

Definitely teething. I feel like an asshole for hating my daughter for being in pain. Asleep on mattress at 9:30, slept until 11, nursed again, and back in our bed around midnight. Tossed and turned all night.

The only thing that makes her mouth feel better is nursing. I’ll be giving her some pre-bedtime Motrin tonight to see if that makes a difference.