Tiger Dad by Day, Mr. Softie by Night

Losing control over my sleep has been one of the hardest parts of being a parent.  

The fear that something -- a diaper mishap, a siren, a growing pain -- might transform my slumbering cherub into a wailing wreck looms over my every restful moment. 

Fortunately, my wife and I lucked out. Our son has had a strong diurnal rhythm from the start -- even in the womb he rarely kicked past bedtime. Sure, we've had the occasional hiccup of a few sleepless nights. But a blend of letting him cry before swooping in to provide comfort always solved the problem before it got out of hand. 

Until two months ago, when a form of toddler insomnia hit. 

It started with him screaming in terror several times between midnight and 6 a.m. My wife and I blamed nightmares or teething pain and consoled him as usual with belly pats and soft-whispers.  

Before long, these soothing sessions grew to Olympic proportion. I’d end up on the floor, head against the crib, my hand stuck through the bars making slow circles across his stomach for 30, 40 minutes. Whenever I broke rhythm and dozed off he fussed, shocking me awake. But no matter how torturous the process, at some point he made it back to sleep. 

However, as the weeks went by he became increasingly resistant, bolting up at the slightest creak, crying before I even reached my bed. It got so that he was up 10, 12 times a night, maybe more. It's hard to say exactly, as my nights became a staccato of light rest and long-wakes.  

Never being able to settle into a deep sleep, I felt stuck in a nightmare. My perception of time warped. A long period of peace might turn out to have only lasted 5 minutes, while hours passed on watch by his crib. I greeted each morning with a headache behind the eyes and a sense of dislocation, like jet lag minus the pleasures of vacation. 

My wife, who has to leave the house and interact with people professionally each day, slept in the living room. "You can let him cry, you know," she'd tell me. 

"I can handle it," I insisted. 

In some ways, I thought this was payback for the many months when she had to wake up to nurse him. I wanted to prove I could be just as devoted to our son. I relished playing super-parent, so much so that I really believed I could solve my son's sleep problems for him. His resistance also sparked a touch of father-son rivalry. My perseverance would wear him down! But honestly, I just didn't want to leave him to cry. It bothered me too much. 

I tried a variety of techniques those nights alone with him. Rocking and singing, murmuring encouragement, and the Ferber method of letting him cry for steadily longer intervals before checking on him. A particular strategy might work for a night or two, but like some super-bug, he'd become immune to it eventually. 

Worse still, the problem trickled into the daytime, when instead of napping he lay in a half-lidded twilight state, cocked to scream as soon as I crept away from the crib. Up at all hours with no mid-day break to recharge, I became desperate. I began co-sleeping with him, both at night and at nap, and for a couple of days that did the trick. 

And then he went nocturnal. 

For three strange days, he had me up from 1 to 4 o'clock in the morning. He asked to use the potty, to hear a song, to go downstairs and eat, to have medicine for his teeth – every fifteen minutes some new request yanked him from the brink of sleep. He squirmed, he kicked, he punched me in the face. I became depressed. 

My wife confronted me. "You can't do this any longer. You're not yourself. We have to let him cry it out." 

I fought back, hitting her low with the implication that she couldn’t handle the demands of motherhood. I took my disappointment in myself out on her.  

Then I gave in. Because she was right. I couldn't do it any longer. 

We camped downstairs in our living room with fans running on high to drown out his cries, but still they carried. "Mommy! Daddy! Up! Hug!"  

From around 9 at night until sometime around 3 in the morning he raved. I was up and down, in and out of bad dreams. Several times I woke up sure I heard a bang, my fevered brain figuring that he had crawled out of the crib or hurt himself somehow. I pictured all sorts of horrid scenes. Once I dreamt I went to him, though I hadn't. 

The next morning he greeted us hoarse, and obviously exhausted, but physically unharmed. Still the little bugger fought. Nap didn't happen. He staggered around, weak and pale, quiet and not himself. I feared that, like those horror stories about vaccinations, we had caused irreparable mental trauma and might never have our vivacious, fun-loving little man back. 

But on the fourth night, he went down immediately and without fuss. With that, the problem disappeared and normality reinstated. 

In retrospect, I realize that in some ways his insomnia was a discipline issue. In typical toddler fashion he tested boundaries, seeing what he could get away with, not knowing that his behavior was causing him (and me) harm.  

My coddling only enabled his disruption. I needed to have the strength to allow him to figure out that he could fall asleep on his own – we wouldn't accept, and couldn’t function with him doing otherwise. And today we're happier, and much better rested for it.

But man, those cries -- I'm not sure I've ever heard another human sound so forlorn. Why must growing up be so hard for both child and parent?