Every mother recalls some piece of foolish dogmatism from her pre-mother days. My favorite story is from an old friend who had two daughters. Her first daughter was one of those preternaturally sweet and gentle children who obeys without question or discipline. When this daughter was little, my friend said she frequently looked with disapproval at other mothers and thought, “Why don’t they control their children?”
Then she had her second daughter, a delightful little fireball. Anything this child was commanded not to do, she did. She was unquenchably gleeful in her defiance. She was the kid everyone watched in church, because you knew she was going to do something. She tested every rule, and she giggled while she did it. She was the perfect child to thoroughly flatten any parent’s judgmental certainty. There was no way to have this child and still be pompous about your own parenting.
I had my fireball first. I was full of dogmatic certainty about some things, though mine expressed itself more as shock at other parents than condemnation. I was startled by practices that did not conform to official theories, and suspicious that maybe those parents just were not trying hard enough.
And all that came crashing down the moment I brought JellyBean home.
Sleep was what killed me. JellyBean would not sleep at night. I do not mean she would wake up a lot; I mean she would not sleep. For the entire first month of her life, she stayed wide awake from 10 pm till 6 am. Nothing worked. Nothing.
I have not mentioned this before for obvious reasons, and maybe I will edit it out, but Az works nights. I manage children alone at night. There was no one else to hold her or feed her or rock her. If she was awake, I was awake, all night long. For a month.
At the end of a month, she began to sleep a little at night. I was so grateful. Following the strict instructions of the “Back to Sleep” campaign, I laid her on her back to sleep. But after the first few days, JellyBean decided she would not sleep on her back. She cried and cried. So I introduced one of those wedges under her back to tilt her slightly. That worked for a week, then she decided it was not good enough, and the crying resumed. Reasoning that supervised tummy time was recommended, I decided I could let her fall asleep on her stomach with me in the room, and turn her over after fifteen minutes, once she had fallen soundly asleep. That worked for another week before she decided it was not good enough.
I am leaving out the agonizing hours of screaming. If you have been through it, you know what it’s like and you don’t need me to describe it. One night, the night I finally gave up, she screamed for four hours and clearly planned to continue. I picked her up every fifteen minutes to soothe her, but the moment I laid her on her back again, the screaming started again.
My baby would not sleep on her back. I do not mean she slept poorly or restlessly. I mean SHE WOULD NOT SLEEP ON HER BACK.
By this point, about six weeks into motherhood, I was so psychotic from lack of sleep that I seriously thought: “I will let her sleep on her tummy, and I will just set my alarm and wake up every fifteen minutes every night so I can make sure she is still breathing.”
That plan needs no further comment.
I let my baby sleep on her tummy. There was nothing else I could do. Please do not give me smug suggestions - I tried everything. Babies have minds of their own, and she had made hers up: tummy-sleeping only.
So I spent JellyBean’s first year, especially those first two-to-four-months when babies are at greatest risk of SIDS, feeling like a murderer. I was so successfully brainwashed by the “Back to Sleep” campaign that I felt guilty all the time. I was a horrible mother. I was ashamed. I knew other mothers would condemn me if they knew this dirty secret, and worst of all, I thought they were right to do it.
My second baby was a better sleeper, and tolerated back-sleeping at first, but by four weeks it was clear that back-sleeping meant she would wake up every 60-90 minutes, but tummy-sleeping meant she would wake up every 3-4 hours. I still laid her down on her back every night, but would let her change position if she protested too much. I had no one to give me a break at night, and with two children to take care of, I had few opportunities to nap during the day. I had to be able to function; so I let Sweetpea sleep on her tummy, too. When she surprised me by rolling over at six weeks, I thought, “Yes! See? She can roll over now. Nothing to worry about.” But I still worried.
When I think about reasons to stop having children, the top of my list is not money or quiet or exhaustion. The top of my list is the gut-wrenching fear and guilt I feel when I try to decide between my baby sleeping on her tummy, or crying on her back. I don’t know how many times I can take the stress of this decision.
The statistics for back-sleeping as a preventative for SIDS are compelling. Babies who sleep on their stomachs are twelve times more likely to suffer unexplained crib death than babies who sleep on their backs. Since the “Back to Sleep” campaign began, SIDS deaths have fallen every year. This does seem to be saving lives. I completely understand doctors like my own stressing the importance of this. I imagine if you are a pediatrician, there is nothing worse than losing a patient to crib death, and whatever steps are necessary to reduce the numbers must be worth it.
The idea of losing a baby to SIDS (or anything else) is starkly terrifying. The idea of being responsible for it (which is in effect what the “Back to Sleep” campaign is saying) is even worse.
What makes me nail-spitting, fist-pounding angry are the smug authorities who pretend that mothers like me let their babies sleep on their tummies only out of selfishness or ignorance. When I was struggling with this decision the first time, I read one doctor who said, when questioned about the way many infants hate to sleep on their backs, “It’s hard to know for sure what babies like since they can’t tell us.” Excuse me? Tell you what, lady, you come spend the night at my house. Every time the baby screams I’ll jab a needle in your foot to wake you, and you can tell me how hard it is to “know what babies like.”
My sister tells me that for mothers of more than three kids, tummy-sleeping is the dirty little secret they lie to their pediatricians about. At a certain point in Jellybean’s infancy, I told my own pediatrician (an attentive and dedicated doctor about whom I have no complaints) that if she kept asking about sleep position I would just lie to her. I think we both breathed a sigh of relief when JellyBean passed the one year mark.
I want to see more exhaustive research on this. SIDS is still so unexplained. But more than that, I want statistical analyses that address back-sleeping more comprehensively. What are the statistical relationships between back-sleeping infants and their parents’ post-partum depression, or domestic abuse, or car accidents? I bet those statistics would be interesting. Somehow I doubt I am the only person who finds this health practice debilitating or impossible.
So now I have another baby due in the spring and I am already tensing up, wondering if I will be able to manage the back-sleeping this time. My husband and my parents and my mom-in-law all look at me with patient, pitying eyes if I talk about it. They think I am a good mother, that I worry too much, and that whatever I decide, the baby will be fine.
But I listen to the bad voices too much, and in my heart of hearts, on the bad days, I feel like a murderer.