No Cry My Ass

It is now past noon and I have been “putting my child to sleep” for two and a half hours.  Is she asleep?  Hell no!  For the first hour and a half she cried and it didn’t matter if I was holding her, placing her in her crib, patting her back, talking to her, singing to her, and/or sitting beside her.  Oh, there were moments of silence.  There was even two minutes when she was actually almost asleep and then she woke herself up screaming again.  At the hour and forty-five minute mark she decided to stop yelling and start doing her “ba, ba, baing” thing which is what she does if she needs to tell me that I am a bad person and that she disagrees vehemently with whatever it is that I am or not doing .  This continued for awhile longer and then she went back to the crying.

At the moment I am reading a variety of books on getting babies to sleep.  All of them supposedly ‘no cry’ but nowhere in any of them do they talk about the child that just cries as soon as the idea of sleep is suggested.  The Baby Whisperer” suggest the ‘pick up, put down’ method.  Apparently as soon as they start crying you are supposed to pick them up, hold them (NO BOUNCING OR ROCKING though ’cause that is just BAD BAD BAD) and then as soon as they stop crying, you put them down.  When they cry again, you pick them up and so it goes.  At no point does she talk about the baby that has entwined her fingers into your hair and that the moment you lean uses the hair as handle holds to hang on.  As I  try to pry her one hand out of my hair, the other invariably has grabbed onto something else by which to ensure that she is permanently attached to my body.  This can also include but is not limited to my lips, shirt, crib, and air.  The No Cry Method does not even mention what to do if your child has decided to cry for two hours.  Somehow you are just supposed to include a variety of rituals and then Voila you have a baby that sleeps with no crying. My reading has not been limited to these two books but have included a vast array of internet sites, books from the shelves of the local bookstore or library and anyone who has a child that does not have bags under their eyes (the child I mean, not the parent.  The parent can have bags under their eyes for good reasons like staying up late and actually having sex with their partner, or going to a movie, or reading a book or well the options are limitless.)

The hardest part is that if I laid down with her in our bed, gave her some milk and then sat there with her she would have been asleep in twenty minutes.  However, due to her crawling and moving we can no longer put her to sleep for her naps on our bed.  So here I am – obsessing and waiting for the knock on the door from child services because of the complaints that have been made about the screaming child.  Though, we do have double-glazed windows so maybe she can’t be heard from the outside.  Part of the problem with this morning was that I was so conscious of her crying and worrying about what people would think.  There is something to be said for the anonymity of a an apartment versus where we our living now.

I am also worried that this is what my life has become – my biggest concern in the world and the only thing on my mind is whether or not Pumpkin sleeps in her crib.  There are political scandals to analyse, educational and environmental policies to critique, literature to read, music to hear and a mind to cultivate and all me efforts are consumed with the sleeping behaviour of an eight and half month old.   Has my life become so pedestrian?

Well, it is almost time for her afternoon nap.

Overwhelmed

This is the best word to describe my state of being at the moment. I am trying to be positive and glass half full but then there are the moments of complete and utter panic. I actually have felt a couple of panic attacks coming on but have managed to breathe them out. It has been a loooong time since I have had a panic attack and having one with an 8 month old hanging out on the floor is probably not the best way to restart them. I remind myself that I am not the only one who has to pack and move. I am moving a 20 minute drive away not across the country like some people that I know. Really all these reminders do is make me get mad at myself for being so whiny.

I have made lists and make sure that I cross things off to make myself feel better. This works occasionally. We have 20 boxes of books. They are lined up against one wall. I have 6 boxes of kitchen stuff. There are at least another 6 boxes to go. Then there is the den. The front closet. The clothes closet. Imogen’s stuf. The list is endless. 5 bags of stuff went to the Sally Ann and the Elizabeth Fry Society. There is a box of books to be taken to the used bookstore. There is the cleaner to arrange to come in and clean the place but no one is phoning me back. There is laundry to be done. There are the phone calls with the change of address. Oh, and an Imogen to be taken care of. Ryan had an assignment due this week which took up most of the weekend and he had class last night. He can only take Friday off (thank God for that) but because he has a student teacher he can’t actually take a day off to help pack.

Oh, and our landlords want us to take some pictures of the place furnished so that they can use them when they list the place. This means that I have to move all of the boxes in order to take pictures.

What happened to thriving under stress? Actually, I think if the stress was work related I would be alright. Each box here means that a tiny little root is being torn up, multiply that and I am almost at the point of being completely rootless. My house has always been my place to ground and escape from chaos. I am having a really difficult time with this move and I don’t know why. I find myself thinking about having to move again in a couple of years because we will have grown out of the new place. Moving into another place that is not ‘ours’. I think that might be the problem. My roots are questioning whether or not they should bother burrowing in if there is the knowledge that they are going to be ripped up again. I don’t think that I have committed to my new home but look at it as a transitioning place. That doesn’t bode well for my sanity.