Our solution? We lie. We say our babies are sleeping well, whatever that means, and so do all the other mums we know. We tell our GP’s and our Plunket nurses. Already anxious and sure we’re terrible mothers, we cannot bear to hear the lecture. A good friend I know facilitates regular support groups for new mothers. She tells me that after every session where sleep is discussed, a mother will sidle up to privately to confess that her baby is not sleeping. And worse yet, that she can’t bear to let the baby cry. Strangely, we have come to feel embarrassed about what is utterly normal: a baby who wakes in the night and needs us.
I wasn’t prepared to be that needed, to be so important to another human being. Adult relationships, at least mine, were tinged with an intentional dose of healthy independence. We rejoiced in each other’s company, but also in solitude. Yet when my baby cried in the night, it was an inescapable need for me. Sure, this can be explained physiologically, nutritionally and even neurologically. But it didn’t explain the huge weight that my heart carried all the time. Still does. Our babies’ dependence on us is much greater than physicality. It is an entwining of trust and soul. To be awakened in the night with this reality can feel – can be too much to bear at times.
So what do I say when mothers ask me for advice, whether it be as a professional or simply as mum to children who have grown beyond infancy? First: the desperation and the need are normal. It’s all normal. You are not the only one coming unglued at 3:00 am. You are not the only one secretly thinking you may have made a mistake. You are not the only one wondering if you will ever regain your normal life, get your mojo back and contemplate life outside these four walls. I realise that being normal doesn’t make you feel good. But it stops you feeling a failure. Second: this is temporary. Babies learn to sit up, walk, feed themselves and even sleep. It may take until adolescence but it eventually happens. And when you get to adolescence, whether it is a slog through angst and disgust or another challenge to be faced together depends, in large part, on
what sort of deal you’ve made in infancy.
I am not so naïve as to think that explaining to a desperate mother that she is normal and infancy fleeting makes it all okay. But I am sufficiently hopeful to think it matters that we say these things first. It matters that we think them. Exhaustion unites parents. It also unites us with our tiny babies. A baby’s need is often deepest in the dead of night. But it is in responding to that pure and tender need, no matter what the hour, that we can grow stronger in our love.
