Yesterday was a rough day for me. Oh, nothing bad happened. It was just one of those days in which you are more susceptible to feeling crappy about yourself. Your perceptions are off about things and it's very easy to skew reality. You know, one of those days where someone looks at you and appears to be glaring and you think you did something to offend them, while in reality the sun was in their eyes. One of those days that you talk to your friends and they may sound a little curt over the phone and you think you let them down or somehow upset them, but in actuality they ate a bite of something nasty. I had one of those days yesterday.
It all began when David woke up at 4:30, like usual. Yes, you read that right. My child wakes up at 4:30ish nearly every morning. And that's where my day went wrong. Right from the start. Sometimes we can get him back to sleep for a little while by bringing him into bed with us. That doesn't seem to be working very well lately, though. Yesterday he decided he would be happy with that for about 20 minutes and then proceeded to cry inconsolably for an hour. No clue why. We bounced, rocked, shushed, you name it - we did it. Nothing worked. Except, finally, to just let him be awake. During that time I lost my patience with him. I got frustrated. I snapped at him. And I felt horrible about it afterwards.
See, I feel like the biggest failure because my child doesn't sleep past 4:30. Oh, he gets 10 hours of sleep every night. But that's just it. He sleeps exactly 10 hours, some nights 10 and a half. Nothing we do makes him sleep later. And since the topic of sleep and sleeping through the night or napping is a pretty big one with new parents, it tends to come up a lot. I always dread it because once I mention that he wakes up at that hour, the mouths drop open, the eyes widen and the looks of horror come onto people's faces. The advice starts to pour in: "Have you tried putting him to bed later?" "Have you put him to bed earlier?" "What about just leaving him in there?" "What about doing cry it out?" "I could NEVER wake up that early!" And I feel like a failure all over again. Those looks, those reactions, not to mention my own exhaustion since, you know, I've been up since 4:30, make me feel like the biggest loser on earth. And in those moments, everyone - myself included - forgets that my child actually sleeps for 10 hours straight. Yep, that's right. He sleeps REALLY, REALLY well for 10 hours. That's actually quite a long time! But, since this world - myself included - has been trained to think that babies and toddlers need/must/have to sleep for 12 hours straight at night, well....I'm a failure.
Except that yesterday, I really started thinking about that. I was quite defeated at 7 in the morning and was sitting on our family room floor, leaning against Andy who was laying on our family room floor (David, meanwhile, was happily cruising around the house with his little walking toy, giggling like crazy), when I told Andy that I felt like a sub-par mom. He looked at me and said, "You're crazy. Look at our little boy. He is healthy and happy. What more could we ask for?" Well, I don't know about Andy, but I could certainly ask for a better wake-up time in the morning. But. But. His words woke something up in me. I had an epiphany. The thought entered my mind, "How am I defining success as a mom?"
Currently, I'm defining it as making sure that my child sleeps 12 hours. On other occasions, I've defined it as being able to breastfeed for a year. On still other occasions I've defined it as my child hitting his milestones early. And do you realize how silly that is? I have been setting myself up for failure! I cannot control any of those things. I can't make David learn something before he's ready (trust me, I've tried). I can't breastfeed if it's unhealthy for me mentally. I just can't. And I can't make my beautiful, wonderful, happy child sleep longer than 10 or 10.5 hours. I can't. I've tried everything. We've done the later bedtime. Guess what? He still wakes up at 4:30, but now he's had less sleep so he's cranky. We've done an earlier bedtime. Guess what? He still wakes up at 4:30, but now he's had more sleep, so he's less cranky. (Which one of those do you think we choose to do?) We've tried doing cry it out at 4:30. Yeah, that was an epic failure. Epic. He was still awake, but now he was tired from crying, hungry on top of it and just really, really wanted OUT of his crib. We were also exhausted and cranky after it because we'd been awake listening to him cry. Epic failure. Epic. I've read every book/blog/website and heard all the stories about, "Oh, I tried this and my child slept for 12 hours!" I've held onto the hope that if I do one of those magical things, David will just suddenly start sleeping for 12 hours. Yeah, no. Not at all. Not even close.
And so, yesterday, I found myself contemplating that question: "How am I defining success as a mom?" The first step, I realized, was to toss out my previous ideas of success. We'll start with the sleeping for 12 hours at night. I just have to accept that this is how David sleeps right now. And it is temporary, though that may last longer than we want it to. Years instead of days. Who knows when he'll start sleeping later? It will happen someday, but I just have to accept that this is the way it is right now. So, really, how am I going to define my success as a mom? I don't know yet. That's a big question that has long-term ramifications. I do know, though, that I want a happy, healthy child. One who is sweet and thoughtful and kind. One who accepts others. One who takes pride in himself and his hard work. Oh....maybe I do know how I am going to define success as a mom. Maybe, just maybe, I do. And those qualifications for success really have nothing to do with some of the things that I have previously set for myself...or that society has set for me.
In the meantime, I'm going to count down the hours until daylight savings time starts. You know why? Because that means his 4:30 wake-up will magically turn into a 5:30 wake-up. I'll take it.
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