Reality Bites

There was a day not so long ago when I was holding a gallon of milk in the middle of my kitchen, unsure what to do with it.

I didn't recognize it as milk qua milk. I just knew that it something that went somewhere, usually in the morning. I touched it. It was cold. I looked at the refrigerator. I may have said aloud: "Aha, cold things are kept there," and that's how the milk wound up in the fridge instead of Scott's sock drawer.

The State Department regularly includes sleep deprivation among methods of torture in its reports on human rights abuses. Ninety-six hours straight is pretty much the standard minimum for torture, although lots of people start hallucinating after forty-eight. It had been about ten months since the last time I had more than three straight hours of sleep when I forgot what milk was.

I knew I needed help. Henry woke every two to three hours to nurse long after friends with babies the same age were starting to enjoy twelve baby-free hours at night. Getting Henry to nap required at least an hour of cycling through rocking, singing, jiggling him, holding my breath while he at last fell asleep in my arms, placing him in his crib, having his eyes flutter open the minute his back hit the mattress, and back to rocking, etc., until he finally passed out. Then he would nap for twenty minutes and wake screaming and exhausted. I would pour him into the stroller and stagger around the neighborhood hoping he'd close his eyes for even a few minutes.

That's when the Baby Whisperer magically entered my life.

Imagine mixing former Texas Governor Ann Richards with a baby nurse and a liberal shot of hot sauce and wrapping it all up in petit four pastels and you'll get Linda.

Linda caught the eye of some clever television executives after working her magic on one of their own babies. They decided to make a presentation tape to shop around the networks. I met Linda after a casting agent determined that I looked the part of a desperate housewife in need of some serious baby whispering.

Linda doesn't walk into a room, she blows in like a strong gust of wind. We got down to business right away. I was jiggling Henry on my hip and apologizing as he climbed up my shoulder on to my head like a little monkey and started tearing out my hair from the roots.

"He's tired," I explained.

"Honey, it's like he's been on a hamster wheel all night," Linda answered. "Put him down," she ordered gently.

"Down? On the floor?"

"Let me him play. Let him crawl, wear himself out. You've got your house baby-proofed. Give him some space."

I put Henry on the ground gingerly. He crawled over to the coffee table, which I had ringed with thick plastic foam, and pulled himself up to stand, smiling his wide, gummy grin.

"He's not gonna get hurt on that. There's more padding in here than a mental hospital. Let him go," Linda said.

That was my first revelation - that Henry needed more time knocking himself out physically before I tried to put him to bed. I spent hours upon hours playing with Henry, rocking him, cuddling him, reading to him -- but what I didn't do enough of was just leaving him alone (but supervised) and allowing him to explore.

"You have a dysfunctional relationship with your baby," Linda said frankly. "You are co-dependent."

I couldn't argue. Henry and I were literally joined at the hip and I had been unable to stomach allowing him to cry himself to sleep. But I was keeping him from learning how to soothe himself.

Linda was firm, but reassuring -- I was sure she made the sharpest hospital corners and the softest biscuits in Texas. With her by my side, we put Henry down for a nap and let him cry and wail for almost three hours before he finally fell asleep.

That night, he slept through the night with barely a whimper before bed. Linda arrived the next day for more "baby boot camp." Henry gave her a hard look. His eyes seemed to say, "You are so damn lucky I can't talk yet."

Naps were to be our greatest challenge. No nursing Henry before bed, no rocking him to sleep. I could develop a sleep-time routine, and then he was to be put down awake and allowed to cry himself to sleep -- or, as was the case with Henry, to stand rigid against the bars of his crib shouting "Mama" at the top of his lungs for two hours until it was time for his next feeding.

Linda returned to Texas, but stayed in touch by phone. She left reassuring messages for me when I was afraid I might crack. I had to put Henry down, then go into my shower, the only place in the apartment where I couldn't hear his screams.

I'm not sure who cried more during sleep-training, me or Henry. Leaving him to cry in his crib took every ounce of strength I had. I couldn't sleep at night because I was waking up every couple hours to listen for him. When I did finally sleep, I had nightmares.

Eventually I resurrected Henry's pacifier and allowed him to have it when I put him to bed. And I rocked him while I read and sang to him. But our entire routine was down to about 15 minutes and I always put him down in his crib awake.

For two weeks, I stood by my routine and Henry stood by his. I put him to bed, he stood at his crib railing and screamed. But each day, he screamed a little less. Then there came a day when Henry flatly refused to nap. He howled like an animal. All day. That night, he was still up at 11 p.m.

I was an emotional shipwreck a mile from safe harbor. We were so close, and now everything was lost. Mother overboard. I searched the house frantically for Linda's number and couldn't find it. I sent manic texts to her business manager.

In desperation, I called my mother. "It's always darkest before the dawn," she said.

That day in the Post, there was a story about David Tarloff, a man who is claiming insanity after he brutally stabbed a psychologist to death. He was carrying adult diapers at the time, and later said he was planning to free his sick mother from her nursing home and take her to Hawaii. Turns out David and his mother slept in the same bed in Queens until he was about 40.

I didn't want to raise a David Tarloff. I wanted an Olympic champion, a future president, or at least a man who could sleep through the night without his mother.

The next day Henry and I were up with the sun.

After his breakfast, I took him into his nursery, rocked him for a few minutes, read him a story, and forced myself to say brightly "Nap time!" in the same voice I usually reserve for "Cocktails!"

I closed the door and waited for the verbal assault. Nothing. Not a peep.

He woke two hours later, calm and smiling. I fell on him like I was Michael Phelps' mother. "I am so proud of you!" I gushed. We did a victory lap around the apartment.

Four hours later, I did the same thing - a little rocking, a story and some singing. I laid him down in his crib with his "softie," a cross between a stuffed animal and a plush handkerchief.

He blinked a few times after I announced "Nap time!" I shut the door. Silence.

Since then, Henry usually goes to bed without a fight. Henry sleeping is a wondrous thing. He is less agitated, more cuddly. He has been eating almost twice as much and his time between naps is filled with happy play.

Sometimes a dose of harsh reality is exactly what we need.