"How is she sleeping? Is she sleeping through the night yet?" I think this is the most frequently asked question I have been asked over the past several months. I am fairly certain that every new parent or parent of a new baby is asked this question countless times during the first months after their little one is born. I was surprised how soon people thought my daughter should be able to sleep through the night. At one month old people were asking me if I was getting any sleep yet, and of course I was not!
Now that my daughter is almost four months old I can answer this question, "Yes, most of the time, usually, kind of..." I have been mulling over this obsession people have with babies and their sleep since she was born and trying to figure it out. I think most of the time the inquiries stem from genuine care about my well-being and my husband's - people want to know how we are doing, and everyone remembers the horrifying lack of sleep that accompanies the first few months of parenthood.
But one thing that always surprises me is that people rarely ask me how my daughter is doing on her own terms. Honestly, Charis doesn't care if she sleeps through the night or not. Of course Jonathan and I love sleep, and genuinely enjoy those wonderful nights of 5 or 6 uninterrupted hours that we get now, but at one month old, I knew that my daughter didn't need the ability to sleep through the night. She needed to eat. She needed to grow. And to do that, she needed to wake me up every two hours. And while I was a complete sleepy mess many days, I was happy to be able to do that for her.
This sleep thing got me thinking about the way I usually hear people talk about parenting. I have to say, most of the blogs I read these days and many of the conversations I have make parents sound selfish and narcissistic. I realize that all people are selfish and narcissistic, but I still think it's worth calling parents out on this one. I am afraid I might ruffle a lot of feathers with this, but please just hear me out.
I feel like in our society today (and I'm not saying this is unique to us - I'm sure this has been happening throughout history across the world, but I can only speak to right now, here, today) we make so many of our parenting decisions based off of what works for us as parents or what we feel will be the most satisfying thing for us. From doing everything we can to get children to sleep through the night as soon as possible, to choosing whether or not to stay home with kids, to deciding what kinds of activities we allow our children to do, to making up our minds what we feed our kids, we always seem to make the decision based on what we want to do. I am in no way saying that it's wrong to do one thing or another. I have no opinion on some of these subjects, and I certainly don't believe in making people feel guilty for their choices. I think that many times parents do make decisions about topics such as whether to go back to work or stay home based on what they think is right for their children, but I want to challenge myself as well as others to consider carefully why we are doing what we are doing when it comes to parenting.
Raising kids is not a lifestyle choice. It is a calling, a vocation. I can't just do it however I feel like doing it. This little girl is a gift from God, and she is not mine. God has entrusted her to me for a time, and not just so that I can enjoy her when I feel like it and pass her off to others when I don't. He has entrusted her to me so that I can take care of her, help her grow, teach her about Him, and help her start out her life on the strongest footing possible. And maybe whether or not I get eight hours of sleep doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
In our society we are used to calling the shots. We get to choose between a large variety of lifestyles. I'm in my early to mid 20's right now, and I have lots of socially acceptable choices for my life right now. I could be going to grad school and partying it up, or I could be starting a career and working like crazy, or I could be having kids and staying home with them, or I could be doing some other combination of those things. One nice thing about my generation is that I genuinely feel like I can make any one of those choices and be fairly free from judgement from most of my peers. (Sure, there will be some feminists on Huffington Post writing about how I'm wasting my life raising children, but what do they know? They're the vast minority, and they're wrong.) My point is that we are so used to making decisions about our lifestyle that when we have kids we treat them as just another lifestyle choice.
These days we decide when to use birth control and when to stop, when to try to conceive, whether or not to go back to work after having a baby. We have so many choices. Let's just make sure that we make all these choices thinking through the lens of what is best for our family, and not just what is our preference or what we think will be most comfortable or make us most happy.
I want to emphasize that I am not advocating making any specific choice for the sake of your kids. I'm not saying you have to breastfeed or bottle feed, I'm not saying you have to stay at home or go back to work. I'm just saying that let's make sure we make the choices about how our kids sleep, what we feed them, who cares for them during the day, etc. with purely their best interests at heart. Let's not go back to work because, "I just couldn't stand to be around kids all day." And let's not let our baby "cry it out" because we need a break. If you believe you need to go back to work because it's the best way to provide for your family, great! And if you decide to sleep train because you know it will help your baby sleep better and be better rested in a few days, wonderful! But let's make sure those are our motivations. Parenting is a selfless calling.
My daughter can sleep for seven hours straight now, but she frequently doesn't. I am not perfect, and I would be lying if I said I never woke up frustrated and grouchy because I know she could sleep longer and I'm tired, but I know that she is just a baby. She feels hungry, or she wants to be asleep but has woken up and can't get back to her sleepy place. And she is powerless to help herself. I have the privilege of being able to help her. I get to hold her and help her go back to sleep, or feed her even if I know she could have waited another hour. When you ask me if she sleeps well at night I can confidently say "yes," because even when she does wake up, she has two parents who can hold her and help her get back to sleep or feed her, or whatever. It isn't about me. I can't believe what a joy and a blessing it has been to be there for my little girl so far. She lights up my life and I love her so much! And if that means I won't sleep well again for 18 years, so be it. It is worth it. What a gift!
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