Monday, November 5, 2012

Sleep, elusive sleep.

When I adopted my sheltie Alice 10 years ago, the lady who rehomed her made me bring her home to do a few days' trial to assess my readiness in keeping a dog.
I was also interrogated with a million questions - Was I a student or was I working?
If I'm a student, who is paying for the upkeep of the dog?
Did I have any prior experience in keeping dogs?
Who was I staying with? Did my parents approve of the dog?
Did I stay in an apartment or landed property?
Were there young children or other dogs in the household?
Did I have time to walk her daily?
Likewise, when Andy & I purchased our border collie Maverick, the petshop person passed us packets of sample dog food along with a laundry list of vets and dog training schools categorised according to zone (North, Central, East, West of Singapore).

Having a baby seemed less work than having a dog.
Throughout both my pregnancies, not a single person asked our housing type or assessed if we were emotionally and physically prepared to have children. Nobody asked if we had our home baby-proofed and that we used only products that had passed stringent safety standards. BPA-free? Safety gates? Socket covers? Nobody wanted to know.
No one cared whether we had qualifications in early childhood education or if we were CPR-trained.
We could be serial killers living in slumps and they wouldn't have guessed.


Nobody said parenting was easy, but I didn't know it was gonna be this tough, and nobody warned us.

Tonight was Andy's weekly soccer practice and as Murphy's law would have it, both kids decided not to sleep early tonight. It's a weekday night and I am desperate to get them both to sleep because God forbid they do this when I'm back to work.

The baby attacked my boobs fiercely and the minute I put him down he started crying.
The 3 year old couldn't stop fidgeting about and asking me his wh- questions.
I thought I was about to go insane so I promptly sent some expletives to Andy's hp, and asked him to kindly come home (get your bloody ass back home IMMEDIATELY you bloody jerk asshole!!!)

I had looked up parenting books for sleep advice and diligently followed every instruction. Putting a child down for nap? Draw the curtains, dim the lights, quieten the room to reduce stimulation. The result? I have a toddler who is the lightest sleeper on the whole planet.
Sleep scheduling your infant? Allow your infant to self-soothe and if the crying doesn't stop, gently pat him and coo to him in soft, reassuring tones.
My infant didn't care to "self-soothe", and neither of us could hear my reassuring coos from all that screaming.

Who comes up with such advise?! Are people who write parenting books, parents?
Fuck sleep training, whatever that means anyway.
If sleep didn't elude any parent, I'd have 8 more kids.


Presenting my two monsters:



Adam says Ashton is his best friend forever, and that I'm naughty (because I scolded him) so I am not his best friend. Horror of horrors!
Well, at least my life isn't boring.

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