And Then They Were Six

Six months, that is.

I re-read the previous three posts, and I can't even believe how much life has changed in just six short months. I can't believe how much life has changed in the last three months, or since yesterday, for that matter. It is amazing how certain cliches suddenly make sense when you become a parent. "The only constant is change," for example. Or perhaps that is the sleep deprivation talking.

In the time between the last entry and now, our most significant change has been sleep training. We kept up that exhausting high-wire act of lulling two babies to sleep 6 times a day, until one night I heard Lydia cry out in distress and ran into the nursery to find her face down in the crib, in her swaddle.

And that was the end of the swaddle.

The next night, it took me 2 hours to lull her to sleep without her swaddle.

And that was the beginning of sleep training. Now I know sleep training is a controversial subject, and I myself was heard to shout things like "You're a monster" at the people around me helping during that first brutal night. But in our house and in our lives it has worked nothing short of a miracle. The swing that lovingly held Miriam for all of her sleep prior to sleep training now lovingly holds both girls only for play-time. And when left to her own devices, Lydia fell asleep in 15 minutes flat that first night instead of the 2 hrs it took her in my arms the night before.

I cried through the entire day leading up to our first night of sleep-training. After the swaddleless soothing debacle I knew I had no choice, but I couldn't get over the fact that they would never again have the innocence that, whenever they called out, Mommy would come to help. If I'm honest with myself though, as twins they never really had that innocence: when I was changing one, the other was left to hang out on her own despite her vocal imploring that I ignore her sister in favor of her. Same thing with getting them dressed, same thing with picking them up to play, and so on. So really, I was mourning something that never existed. But in my mind I was abandoning them to the grown-up world and the lonely night. That day, I kept explaining to the girls over and over again what was going to happen that night: that we would be letting them learn how to fall asleep on their own. That we loved them very much and would be there for them in the middle of the night when they got hungry again, but we wouldn't be coming in to help them go to sleep because it was time for them to learn how to sleep without us. I started to cry each time I explained this to them and the girls picked up my despair and mirrored it back to me; it was not a fun day for any of us.

Night came, and we did our routine: two girls splashed in the bath and got put in pajamas, and two girls ate at the breast and received their vitamin d drops. And then two girls got zipped into sleep sacks and reminded that tonight they were going to learn to fall asleep on their own. And the ocean sounds were played on the stereo and the little space heater was turned on, and then two little girls were put down in their cribs and told, "Goodnight". And Mommy and Daddy left the room.

Almost immediately, both girls started to cry. Right at that moment, my sister-in-law arrived to lend her support: after sleep training her four children she is somewhat of an expert. She asked how I was doing. I told her to f-off and that I hated her. She smiled, gave me a hug, and then she and Bruno walked me to the room in our house furthest from the nursery.

According to all the books, I was to wait 5 minutes, and then I could return to the nursery and offer a consoling pat or two. When Bruno stood in front of the clock counting down those infinitely long five minutes, I nearly tore his head off. I raced back to the nursery as soon as the clock hit its mark, Bruno in tow, and attempted to soothe two children used to being held until they were asleep with a mere pat or two. To my shock, Lydia actually calmed. Miriam, as might have been predicted, was a flailing banshee, and our presence seemed to simply inflame her ire. After a minute of my trying to pat her into calmness, Bruno dragged me out of the nursery.

This time I was to wait 10 minutes. Bruno and my sister-in-law wanted to return to the sound proof booth, but I insisted on standing vigil in the living room: if my children were going to have to go through this, the least I could do was suffer along with them, and send them my best hoodoo-voodoo vibes for calmness. I poured my energy toward them: "you can do this, my big brave girls, just relax into sleep, you can do this..." To no avail.

10 minutes up and I was screaming at Bruno to return to the nursery. Again, to my shock, Lydia calmed with a few pats, and that was the last we heard from her that night: she fell asleep after that. My theory is that Miriam's bellowing was so annoying that Lydia fell asleep to shut it out. Miriam, in the other hand, seemed offended by our offered pats, and looked, as our Dr. said to expect, like she had been run over by a bus. A minute or so later, and Bruno was dragging me out of the room again, and this time insisted that I return to the room on the other end of the house, where he turned on the fan, the heater and the clothes dryer.

Since Lydia was asleep and Miriam seemed to rev up when we returned to the nursery, we decided to stay out at this point and let Miriam work this through on her own. Every ten minutes I insisted in poking my head out the door to hear what was happening. Lydia remained asleep, and Miriam continued hollering her protest. It was during this period that I shouted out things like, "you two are monsters!" and "I hate my life, I hate myself, I hate you two!" to my poor husband and patient sister-in-law. And then, at nearly two hours from when we started, Miriam finally fell asleep.

And stayed asleep. This child, who for the last three months had slept only in the rocking arms of her parents or her swing within the comforting hug of a swaddle, was now sleeping soundly in her crib. And though I was terrified of a repeat performance after the middle of the night feed, to my complete shock both girls fell back to sleep on their own and without any crying. The next night, Lydia cried for 15 minutes, Miriam for 30 minutes, and then both were asleep. The third night, both cried for a mere 10 minutes and that was that.

The difference this has made in our lives is enormous. Before sleep training, the bed-time routine rarely finished before 8pm and then we tiptoed around like crazy people living in fear of a child waking up, which meant one of us had to go and bounced her back to sleep. Now, we finish up at 7pm, kiss the gals goodnight and leave the room, and they chat or play with their blankies and fall asleep on their own. And if they wake, they can go back to sleep on their own too. An absolute miracle.

But the biggest miracle of all is the discovery that Miriam is a great sleeper! All that time I was keeping her in the swing, and she was getting junkie half-sleep was belying her true nature. It turns out, she loves to sleep! If I am late getting her down for a nap, she protests vociferously, and once I put her in her crib, she looks me in the face, gives me one last screech for good measure, and then rolls to her side, sticks her thumb in her mouth and goes straight to sleep. Amazing.

Lydia still seems to need those same 10 minutes of crying to get to sleep before every nap and before most bedtimes. It is fairly upsetting to me, until I remember how long it took her to fall asleep when I was "helping" her, and how much sleep she lost that way. Now she works it out for her ten minutes, and then settles in, gets great juicy chunks of sleep and wakes up smiling.

Amazing how much can be accomplished when you simply step out of the way.