Today as I was rocking Aoife, quietly nursing her to sleep, I remembered the rants I used to post here in the winter, as I paced, cooped up in the midst of a New England winter, willing my daughter to sleep on her own.
It never happened. I did let it go for a bit, and while Aoife surely enjoyed her two-hour cocktail parties with Princess and Special Blanket in her crib, chatting away, singing songs, reciting books from memory, I began to feel more and more guilty about her not getting that 2 hours she would greedily lap up if only I would just rock her a little, nurse, sing softly, and pat her little back. So we just went back to that, happily. I nurse her to sleep every day, and in exchange, she sleeps for two hours every afternoon. It is a nice arrangement. There is no more angst.
It is interesting how, as mothers, we can sometimes create these situations that seem kind of serious and needing to be solved. Often, I think, it is more about us feeling this constant need to be in control in some way. When Liam was a baby, I know I felt this all the time. There was this feeling that everything I did was going to cause something else to happen. If I nurse him to sleep every time, that will cause him to be a bad sleeper. If I don't feed him enough of a variety, he won't be a good eater. With Aoife, I was less this way on a regular basis, but then when there were times in my life when I was generally more uptight, it crept back in. Me being annoyed about her really mild sleep dependence at naptime is a perfect example that I can see so clearly right now. That was just me, in the middle of winter, really, really wanting to be able to have 2 hours to myself in the middle of the day. Simple, that.
I really do look forward to having another baby again, because I feel like with each baby, it gets a little simpler just in that I realize that there are very few situations that really need to be solved. While I am a big believer in calm, consistent routines, I also really adhere to the chimpanzee theory of baby-parenting, and the more I let go of the idea that I am "forming habits" (which is a thing people throw around when talking about newborns, and it is really a load of crap) the more I am encouraged to just think chimp and love my baby. I think I was about 40% chimp with Liam, and about 80% chimp with Aoife. So maybe I can get up to like 92% chimp with the next one. We shall see.
It is fascinating how different the babies are.
And in this, I must reflect, that I cannot ever make statements like the ones I made above without wondering for quite some time what it would have been like if my Charlotte had lived. Where would she have slept? How? Would I have nursed her to sleep? I won't ever know. And I can't even imagine. She is like a dream to me.