To Obey or Not? A young mother is tempted to disregard the expert parenting advice she received

There are so many things I forgot.

I forgot how long it takes for the umbilical cord to fall off, for instance, and how tiny infant fingernails can feel like a razorblade when they rake themselves against my palm.
But I did not forget my mistakes.

I did not forget that when my big girl was a baby, she took her naps in a cozy bed made of my own arms in a dark corner of a musty Brooklyn closet. I did not forget that I listened quietly to the rattling clangs of death produced by an ancient Brooklyn radiator while suppressing coughs and sneezes so my little girl won’t wake up.

Something had to change, and on my daughter’s nine-month birthday, it finally did.
The sleeping coach we called was both calm and kind, and she methodically reversed the 100 mistakes I made with my baby starting from her birth.

I learned about things like sleep crutches, all of which I gave to my baby. She fell asleep while I fed her or rocked her, and she never learned how to do it by herself.

“She needs to be put into her crib sleepy, but awake,” The Coach told me.

“I know!” I said. “I read that everywhere! But she cries!”

“As crazy as it sounds, a tired baby will not sleep. Your baby is chronically sleep-deprived. Good sleep breeds good sleep.”

The Coach was too kind to tell it to me like it was, but as I listened and learned, I understood that it wasn’t my baby who made me sit in a closet, frozen in place, while she took her afternoon nap.

The mistakes were mine.

I did it to myself.

From that place of self-recognition began the complicated process of detangling my mistakes one at a time, until one month later, my baby slept blissfully through the night, and took her naps in her own crib.

As the dust settled once again in our former spot in the musty closet, and days became days, and nights became nights, and moisturizer became moisturizer and not toothpaste, and toothpaste became toothpaste and not moisturizer, I told myself that mistakes are the premise for change; and now that I was smarter, wiser, and better-rested, I’d never make the same ones again.

My husband and I talk about this on the way home from the hospital. We talk about the Brooklyn closet while I steal glances at our new baby who looks like a fragile doll in the car seat beside me, dressed pretty in a pink hat with a pompom that is larger than her face.
The hat is too big on her, and I fuss with it while we speak. We say the same things, over and over. This time, we say, there will be no mistakes. This time, the baby will sleep.

“Sleepy but awake,” my husband says.

“Yes,” I nod solemnly and then repeat, “sleepy but awake.”

 

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