Elusive sleep
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By Chi-Young Kim
I read somewhere once that one shouldn’t refer to one’s child in negative terms. Instead, a parent should focus on the positive side. A complaining child isn’t “demanding,” he “knows what he wants,” and an ill-behaved child isn’t “out of control,” he’s “spirited.” I try not to talk about a particular omnipresent issue in my life, but it’s time to come out of the closet. My daughter is a “spirited” sleeper. Until she turned 18 months old, she only slept six hours straight twice. Her usual pattern was sleeping in three-to-four-hour chunks. That may not sound bad, but the result of such sleep deprivation is a brain ― mine ― filled with holes.
Like all infants, in the beginning my daughter slept in fits and starts. My mom regaled me with horror stories of my own terrible sleeping habits, so I didn’t think anything of it. The first four months of my daughter’s life are a hazy blur; I remember being unable to string together sentences, staring in disbelief when friends told me how “tired” they were because they’d gone out the night before, and reeling with hope when a neighbor looked me in the eye and said, “It gets better.” My daughter’s sleep habits, however, never did get much better. For a period of two months, it got even worse: she woke up every hour, screaming. I was a zombie at work. In fact, entire months from her first year are erased from my memory.
When my daughter grew out of her bassinet, we brought her into our bed. It was partly because I was nursing all night, and partly because my daughter wouldn’t sleep unless she was touching a parent. I got more rest. I was aware that Americans frowned on co-sleeping, but I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of unsolicited advice and outright disapproval. People reacted with horror and disbelief. “The baby will never leave the bed!” “She has to be independent!” Nobody seemed to realize that, like the majority of Koreans my age, I slept with my parents when I was a baby, as did my sister. We’re the most independent and confident people I know. And we don’t sleep in my parents’ bed, and haven’t for decades.
It didn’t help that all the kids in my husband’s family were apparently good-natured, cheerful, and excellent sleepers. The older generation told stories of how their kids would just pass out, or how they would cry for a little bit before falling asleep. Our daughter did not inherit those genes. Each time someone made a comment, I would think to myself, “Why don’t you come and take the 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, and 5 am shifts before giving me unsolicited advice?” We read books, all of which advised that we should lay her down when she was “awake but drowsy.” The problem was, no matter what we did, our daughter was either awake and crying, or sleeping. There was no middle; we would try to put her down when she was drowsy and her eyes would fly open as she emitted a banshee scream. According to my parents, though, compared to me and my sister, our daughter was an easy baby.
So we went underground; whenever anyone asked if our daughter was sleeping through the night (in my opinion, the worst thing to ask an addled, sleep-deprived new parent), we would say, “It’s better…oh, she loves her crib!” That was technically true in the sense that she loved playing in it, but it gave the impression that she wasn’t sleeping in our bed. We set up her room to feel cozy, with books, a crib, and wall decals. Only a handful of people knew she never once slept in that crib.
I belong to a listserv of moms in the Los Angeles area, and one night, a woman posted a desperate message describing her infant son’s terrible, disjointed sleep. She’d tried everything but nothing worked. She was worried that she was doing something wrong and that she was damaging him for life. A stream of messages started to flow in; most people suggested this book or that sleep consultant, some suggested tough love, others counseled that she just had to bear it until the baby grew out of it. I immediately sent her a private message. I told her that I’d co-slept for years and that I’d grown up unscathed and fiercely independent. We struck up a periodic email correspondence, checking in with each other, commiserating about terrible sleep regressions and venting about smug people who dole out advice (their kids probably slept 8 hours a night by the time they were a few months old, we agreed).
With crib sleeping the norm here, many Americans seem not to realize that there are other ways to raise children. My mother was bemused by my difficulties with unsupportive people. She told an old family friend, who is Japanese, about my struggles, and he reacted with disbelief. Not only did he and everyone he knew sleep with their children but it also never occurred to him that some people would have problems with it.
Now, when I meet a new parent, I just smile, congratulate them, and say, “You look great!” and shut my mouth. That’s what I wish people had done when I was deranged with exhaustion.
Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Young-ha, and Jo Kyung-ran. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.com or via her website, chiyoungkim.com.