Thursday, November 13, 2008

Mother's Amnesia

I have long argued that mother's amnesia covers much more than labour and delivery.

Despite the fact that almost everyone I know in my generation has battled with some kind of sleep issues with their children, the generation before us insists "We had no problems with our kids sleeping." (Insert "what's your problem" at the end of that sentence, because it is the unspoken ending we all hear.) How is it possible that none of us had sleep issues and yet a good portion of our kids do? Statistically, this makes me go....hmmmmm?!?

My mother-in-law, aunt, and Mom all said this. Although, to give my Mom credit, she did say my brother screamed 12 hours a day for the first 6 months of his life, so "thank God the little bugger slept at night". I crack up every time I hear that. And it was Mom who ratted out her generation. I revealed my theory to her one day and she said, "Lorna said that none of her kids had sleep problems?" in the most surprised voice I have heard in a while. When I confirmed it, she told me that my one cousin cried up to 45 minutes each and every time she was put down for a sleep until she was 2 years old.

Aha! I told you: mother's amnesia.

When Mom came to visit last time, she also said, "You are right: Liam really does not sleep!"

Ummm, Mom, did you think I was lying?

So far we have tried The No Cry Sleep Solution, The Baby Whisperer, The Sleep Lady, and variants of CIO. All to some degree of success and some degree of failure. Right now Liam will go down fairly readily for his morning nap, screams blue murder about an afternoon nap (and often we get nothing from him), and goes to bed easily in the evening, but often wakes up after 6 hours for a snack and then is up and down and up and down from 2-6 am. Causing chaos with Xander and exhaustion for his parents.

Although part of me wants to retain this so I have sympathy for my kids when their children come along, part of me really can't wait for mother's amnesia too.

And it is a heck of a good method of birth control!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

(((hugs)))

Professor Furpants said...

My brother told me, "You bring home this tiny thing and you're all in love with her, and two weeks later she hasn't stopped screaming and you still love her but you desperately want to throw her out the window because you need to sleep. I found out that's pretty normal." (i.e., the feeling, not the throwing ^_-) Babies bring chaos into your life, not peace, not order. Joy, yes, but *chaotic joy*.

Moms are supposed to be perfect angelic madonnas. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way for humans. What does work is that as we move through life, we remember the good stuff because it's more important than the temporary-bad. :)

My baby-rocking arms are yours to command, anytime.