Cal Ripken, Jr. is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but he was also oft-described as the man of a thousand batting stances. His tendency to change the way he stood in the batter’s box countless times throughout his career was a metaphor of the game of baseball and how rapidly it changed, and the endless cat-and-mouse game of needing to change things for when things change on you, forcing them to change in response, and so on and so on. Basically, what it really amounted to was the fact that in order for Ripken to have become the Hall of Famer he is, it required him to be adaptable and willing to change things up, frequently and rapidly.
That’s what sleep training a baby kind of feels like. Every time I manage to get my daughter to go down for a nap successfully, and then try to reenact the exact same procedure the next time around and it inevitably fails, resulting in a screaming baby that takes 45 minutes to go down for 45 minutes, I feel like a failure of a father all over again, and mentally defeated and fried. I realize that no trick, tactic or strategy is ever going to work more than one time in a row, and it’s like going to war with Ultron or Cyclopsis the War Zord from Power Rangers, in that exact sense.
I can read everything on the internet and watch all sorts of mommy vloggers, but I think when the day is over, as long as I go into the pre-nap battleground with a mentally clean slate, and keep consistent to the few rules that mythical wife and I have agreed upon for like circadian rhythm and bassinet, I just have to accept that it’s going to be a new challenge each time, and accept that it might be more difficult than the last time. Considering the fact that anything from indigestion, teething, growth spurts or all of the above can come into play, sleep training ultimately is a constantly moving target, and all I can really do is mentally catalog cues and tendencies, and try to react best to whatever may come.
Just the other day, no amount of holding her was working, and she was wailing for 45 minutes. Needing to take a break, I set her down in the bassinet, and she was out cold almost instantly, much to my confusion; she abhorred the idea of being put on her back just days ago, and now she was falling immediately?? Just two naps ago, holding her still and rocking her had her passed out in my arms, and it was around this time I came to the conclusion that no one thing was ever going to work twice in a row.
Either way, I think I can easily say that up to this point, five months in, sleep training has been the most difficult challenge of new fatherhood. I haven’t felt so discouraged and as much of a failure as a parent as often as I have as much as I have during this time, and as calm as I can get myself back to, the feelings of anxiety and self-loathing is always just the next nap time away.
