I assume that by this point you have read the first two parts of this three part series; pooping and feeding. Now we turn to sleeping, the final leg of the all-a-baby-is-good-for trinity. Right off the bat I have to clarify something that has been bothering me since my daughter came into my life. Why is it that we have come to use the phrase “Sleeping like a Baby”? It is one of the great mysteries of the English language. In my personal experience, we could use the phrase “Sleeping like a Vietnam Vet Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Accompanied by Serious Addiction Issues” and it would describe the same thing. They both wake up every three to four hours screaming at the top of their lungs and no matter how hard you try, you can’t get them to tell you what’s wrong.
Babies sleeping soundly!? Humph…
Add to this, the fact that Abby was a colicky baby and brother; you’ve got some serious stress. Parents with a colic baby are always trying to explain exactly how bad it is. To give you an idea of how bad it is, I once got so mad at someone that I wished they contracted the dreaded flesh eating disease. I wouldn’t wish a colicky baby on anyone. Ever.
And if you’re one of these parents with a perfect baby that is sleeping through the night at day 7, do not give advice to parents of colicky babies. It doesn’t help and you just come of as a jerkface.
“Have you tried swaddling them?”
“No way?! Swaddling them, you say? Can’t say I’ve tried that. I’ve just been throwing wads of tissues soaked with my own frustrated tears at her for the last 18 hours. Maybe I’ll try swaddling”
“Gripe water?”
“Gripe This!”
And before you even suggest it, I already have multiple copies of “Happiest Baby on the Block”. Dr. Karp can suck it.
Trust me when I say this. If it has been suggested by any source over the course of the last 150, 000 years of human history, we’ve tried it. Your advice taken from the pages of the last issues of Today’s Parent is going to do squat. If your baby wasn’t colic, you won’t understand and if your baby was colic, I am so very, very sorry for you.
To sleep,
To sleep perchance to get five friggin’ minuets to myself without you screaming and/or spiting up on me.
Ahh…there’s the rub.
And the only way I have found to do that is to rock them. I do not mean to suggest rocking them until they fall asleep. I mean, rock them until you fall asleep. The minute you think they are asleep and you decide to put them back in the crib is the minute you’re starting the whole thing over again.
So how long do you rock them for, you might ask. It might be easier to tell you how far to rock them.
When Abby was first born, my wife overruled me and we got one of the more expensive gliders available at the time. For this fact alone, my wife is the smartest woman alive. I figure one complete rock in our glider equaled about 18 inches, 9 inches going forward, 9 inches going back. After rocking for hours on end, you start to play little games. One of these games is to time how long it takes to rock 100 complete rocks. This game sucks and eventually you start timing how long it takes you to do 1000 rocks.
It takes me just over 20 minuets to do 1000 rocks. I figure out of every 24 hours, I spent 8 of those rocking Abby to sleep. Don’t believe me? Have you read Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment? I have. Have you read Steinbeck’s East of Eden? I have. F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby? I have, twice. I could go on for 14 other novels, but I think you get the idea.
So now for the math. It breaks down like this…
18 inches/rock X 1000 Rocks X (8hours X 60minutes)/20 =
Or…
18 inches/rocks X 1000 rocks X 24 units of rocking = 432,000 inches
Or in feet…
432,000 inches / 12 = 36,000 feet
Or in miles…
36,000 feet / 5280 = 6.82 miles
But wait…I’m Canadian… what’s that in real distances…
6.82 miles X 1.61 = 10.98 kilometers
Think about that for a second. In just four months I managed to rock more than the distance of an Olympic track and field event. People don’t travel that far for a fun run raising money to help their local zoo. I sure hope my wife got the bumper to bumper extended kilometer coverage on that glider.
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