The girl who would not sleep

My kid hasn’t slept through the night in months. I don’t even know how many because I am too sleep deprived to keep track of things like that. It feels like an endless hell, punctuated by the most acute cuteness and well-timed humor imaginable. 

Exhibit A: Stella is coming down the stairs for the third time. It’s 9:00pm at night. We started bedtime at 7:30pm. All I want to do is read my depressing book in peace and eat something out of her candy drawer. 

I yell up: “I’m about to lose my temper!” 

She yells up: “Well, I’m about to lose your temper!” 

John and I try not to laugh loud enough that she’ll hear us and know she’s won once again.

Other times she’ll appear at our bedroom door in the middle of the night and say urgently, convincingly: “I forgot to do my homework!” 

She’s 3-years-old. Did I mention this? Probably not because I’m too tired. 

As you might imagine, we have gotten a lot of advice from a lot of people about this situation. It is such a situation. And the advice is wide ranging and so well-intentioned. Go to bed earlier. Let her cry it out. Put a lock on the door. Put a nest of blankets on the floor in your room. Give up the naps. Give up entirely. 

One parent said it was all about incentives: make her a chart and if she goes to bed at a reasonable time five nights in a row, she gets a prize. Maya, the older sister, and I geeked out on making the chart and explained it to Stella. We are both rule followers and gratification delayers. We were sure this would work wonders. In fact, why hadn’t we thought of it before? Stella nodded her head and feigned seriousness. 

At 11pm that night, she busted into our dark room and announced, “I don’t care about the prize!” She understood exactly what we were up to and didn’t give a shit. 

Friday night things hit a bit of a fever pitch. John and I ignored the noises from upstairs in Stella’s room and finished our last episode of This is Us. As I tried not to weep (the time capsule!), I heard drawers slamming, but I decided not to care. At least she was staying upstairs. At least I was snuggled under the blanket my mom gave me when I left for college, next to my man, who was doing that weird thing where he puts cookies into the actual glass of milk and eats them out with a spoon instead of dipping them like a normal human person. When we got upstairs to crash ourselves, we peeked into her room and found this:

(Yes, that’s a bathing suit bikini top she somehow managed to get on.)

You might, at this point, not feel very confident in our parenting abilities or the chance that this story might have a happy ending. Well, you’re sort of right. Our parenting abilities are still evolving. This story does not have an ending, because lord knows this girl of a thousand jokes and a future full of partying into the wee hours on rooftops, is going to not sleep again. She is going to not sleep so many times. 

But here’s the happy. 

This week, Maya and Stella decided they were going to sleep together. We’ve intended for them to share a room, but hadn’t gotten around to making it happen, and then when the sleepapocalypse evolved, we sort of lost hope. We had about 2% faith that this would actually work.

But last Sunday, they dragged Stella’s pillow covered in ice cream cones into Maya’s room and they lay Maya’s cowgirl sleeping bag down on the floor and Stella crawled inside. Maya got in her bed and snuggled up to her number one homie for life, Baby Bunny. They both said they were still hungry, so I got them their requisite tortillas (someday I will make a million dollars writing a bestselling parenting book which focuses, not on sleep training, but on the rule in our house that if you are hungry after dinner and bedtime, you are allotted one tortilla, possible thrown like a frisbee into your room depending on the mother’s level of exhaustion). Then I sang them two songs and lay down with Stella and after a few moments she said, “Momma, can you go away so I can sleep with just Maya?” 

And a smile as wide as the ocean spread across my face in the dark and I crept out and went downstairs. John and I started to look at our shared Google calendar and discuss the week, which is only slightly less painful than a canker sore that you revisit with your tongue again and again despite your best intentions not to--Can you pick up on Tuesday afternoon because I’ve got the school thing? What time do you leave Friday? Should we talk about spring break again? And then we’d resolved some things. And we hadn’t used an irritated tone with one another—a small miracle. And then we looked at one another, our eyes growing wide as we registered the not-so-small miracle, and I said, “Do you think it really happened?” 

And he said, “Yeah, it really happened.” 

When we went up a bit later to go to sleep, we peeked in Maya’s room and they were both there, snoozing away in their footie pajamas (covered in rainbows and unicorns for Maya, goofy monsters for Stella). Stella’s body had rotated about 90 degrees so her head was sort of under her sister’s bed, but we checked and she was still breathing. 

And when I opened my eyes ten hours later to our neighborhood birds chirping and the sun’s first rays, I realized that we had all slept straight through the night for the first time in months. I texted a friend who had been particularly supportive to let her know: Maybe she just needs another warm body around?

My friend wrote back: I mean, don’t we all? 

Sort of? Maya most certainly does not need a warm body around. I once tried to share a hotel bed with her and she asked if I would go sleep in daddy’s bed instead. Nothing feels more luxurious to me than a big bed all to myself, no little limbs slapping me in the face in the middle of the night, no husband peering at the glowing screen of his phone to see what time it is, then rustling around to get his running clothes on. But on the other hand, I crave the limbs and the rustling. I want the warm bodies and I don’t want the warm bodies all at once.

In this case, the point is what Stella craves. And it turns out what she craves isn’t a cozy bed or a star chart or parents with exquisite anger management skills. She needs a piece of floor and a sister snoring nearby.

The best, hardest part of parenting, at it turns out, is meeting your kid, over and over. Learning who they are. Trying to show up for that person and not someone else whom you’ve made up in your head.

Nice to meet you again, little friend. Now would you like a Spiderman waffle for breakfast?