until we fall asleep

When I talk to other moms, the conversation inevitably makes its way toward sleep: how is your sleep? Are you sleeping through the night?

We sleep-trained Noah when he was 6 months and had a great run of 12 hour nights. But it seems like the toddler transition has also brought with it more night wakings. Turns out the sleep issues never really fully resolve.

We have tried multiple things – bringing him into our bed (unsustainable), bringing a mattress into his room to sleep with him (not great for our sleep), feeding him a pre-bedtime snack of yogurt so he doesn’t wake up hungry (we are still doing this as a preventative measure) – but we are now trying to put him back in his own bed.

This post, written as a letter, evolved as I was lying with Noah last night trying to keep myself awake while he fell asleep:

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Dear Noah,

You woke up last night yelling “Mama, mama!” Dad and I are still figuring out when to let you settle yourself back to sleep and when to intervene. But after a couple minutes, I decide to go in.

I wipe your snotty nose and tear-stained cheeks.

“You’re okay, Mama’s here,” I reassure you, but you cling desperately to me as if I’m forever forsaking you even as I am just reaching up to grab another tissue.

After taking care of your basic needs (i.e. a Pull-up change, a perusal of the fridge before you decide you are more sleepy than hungry), we traipse back upstairs and I start to lay your limp body back on your toddler bed.

“Hug,” you say, draping your arm around my neck and pulling my face close to yours.

ChatGPT says I’m supposed to tuck you in and leave after 20 – 30 seconds but I don’t see how that is possible without us starting from ground zero all over again.

So I lie there, my head resting beside yours.

Your breathing is short and fast, probably from the impending possibility of me leaving you soon.

I remember what I read in some parenting book about breathing together to co-regulate, so I start to do square breathing: breathe in 1-2-3-4, hold – 2-3-4 and breathe out.

Soon, your breathing also starts to slow.

I listen to your breathing, alternating rhythmically with that of your baby sister’s, sleeping soundly (despite the ruckus) in the crib beside your bed.

I know it will be a while before you fall asleep, and I settle myself in a cross-legged position beside your bed, my neck bent towards you, my cheek feeling your small, warm breaths.

The darkness envelopes us, and I am brought into this liminal moment, the vulnerability of it all.

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I think about the wedding we went to this past weekend.

How that will be us one day, you in your suit next to a bride, all grown up and ready to start a new life, me recounting the memories of when you were two, teary-eyed, not ready to let go just yet.

I think about the dream I had about you last week.

You were petrified of water going into your eyes, begging me to stop the bath (a scene not too far off from real life).

But then, the dream fast-forwarded to you at twenty years old. You had goggles on and were confidently competing in the backstroke category.

Waking up from that dream, I felt like God was encouraging me that every phase shall pass.

That one day, you will be strong and brave, even in the face of water and dogs and the dark.

I think about the audiobook I listened to while making dinner the other day on how the domestic life of homemaking and childcare is akin to being in a monastery.

Ronald Rolheiser writes,

“What is a monastery? A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart, period.

It is also a place to learn the value of powerlessness and a place to learn that time is not ours but God’s…

To be forced to work, to be tied down with duties, to have to get up early, to have little time to call your own, to be burdened with the responsibility of children and the demands of debt and mortgages, to go to bed exhausted after a working day is to be in touch with our humanity.”

It is especially during these midnight wakings with you that I remind myself of the monastic bell – the calls I have to obey, like your midnight cries – reminding me that my time is not my own.

And instead of fighting to return to when I could order my time however I wanted, when I could sleep until I wanted to wake up, I will only find peace when I learn to accept the limitations God has placed around me.

Staying inside my monastic cell, Rolheiser calls it.

It is also often while waiting for you to sleep, that I tend to ponder my mortality.

Perhaps it’s listening to your small, vulnerable breaths in and out that remind me there is nothing I am doing to bring your next breath.

The thought both scares me and makes me turn to the One who does sustain your every breath.

Or maybe it’s watching you grow up in front of my eyes that reminds me, in a more tangible way, of time passing even when I don’t want it to.

That there is nothing I can do to freeze time, to keep you in your subject-verb phase (“Noah eat”),

to stop you from outgrowing my arms.

I know, it’s silly – you being two and here I am thinking about you being twenty.

I guess I should stop being so existential and simply enjoy you being two – I’m probably going to be that mom (against my better judgment), the one who cries at graduations and cheers loudly from the front row.

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Surely 30 minutes must have passed by now since I resumed this cross-legged position by your bed.

Although it’s hard to tell – time starts to blur together after a while.

By now, I have tried multiple times to free myself from your grasp. The technique is similar to playing Jenga, tapping lightly to see if any block budges and applying more force only if the situation is stable.

Once I manage to free my neck, though, you stir and reach for my hand.

This happens again and this time, I give you my finger.

But I think as I gingerly retract my pointer finger from your curled palm without any movement on your part, this might be it.

So, I uncross my legs as quietly as I can and gently unstick them from the foam mat, suddenly aware of how creaky my joints are.

But you are still. Sleep has finally won.

I glance at the clock (3:47) before tiptoeing across the floor, closing your door and sliding under the covers of my own bed.

Until the morning dawns,

Mama