In response to my call for uncomfortable questions, Ewan goes for the jugular:
what do you think your biggest failing as a father has been to date?
See, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about...
The answer is "I get frustrated too easily."
The first few weeks SteelyKid was home, I could get her to go to sleep by holding her curled up on my chest. It was disgustingly cute and heart-warming, and also, little did I know, a brief idyllic period. Starting around week 5, that stopped working, and I have yet to find a sure way of calming her down when she starts melting down, or getting her to go to sleep at all.
If I catch the signs of tiredness early enough, I can get her to go to sleep in a sling around my neck (though there are signs that this might be running out), but I can't put her down afterwards without waking her up, which is kind of limiting. If she's gassy, I can usually keep her somewhat quiet by carrying her around in the "airplane" configuration, but she won't go to sleep that way unless she's screamed herself out, which is sub-optimal for obvious reasons.
When she gets cranked up, nothing I do seems to work, and it's really frustrating. I've kicked or punched a lot of inanimate objects while stuck with Screamy Baby, because she just won't shut up, and it's maddening.
Kate has better luck than I do, I think because she can outlast SteelyKid in a lot of things, and will stick with a given baby-soothing method for longer than I can stand. I try cuddling and gentle rocking and all that, but after five minutes of kicking and inhuman shrieks, I give up and go with "airplane," and just hope to manage the situation long enough to reach either the next reasonable feeding time, or until Kate gets home.
I feel like a heel for that, and I'm trying to do better, but that's unquestionably my biggest failing to date. In twelve or thirteen years, I'm sure SteelyKid will be happy to provide a long list of greater failings, but for the moment, that's my answer.
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Hi, Chad,
I'm a lurker normally, but like every parent, I had my own solutions to this problem - silly face/peek-a-boo for distraction, and rocking-chair with a capella singing for soothing. Both worked for my kid then. Now, if he's on a tear, I just order him to his bedroom or tell him to call up a friend and find someone who wants to listen. (He's 14.) The only long term effect is that I am no longer allowed to sing "My Darling Clementine" or "Yellow Submarine".
Lauren in Los Angeles
My son wouldn't got to sleep from ~3 to 6 months unless he was in his swing. My wife was working nights and I would put him in his swing and fall asleep next to him on the couch. He would wake shortly after I did after a full night's sleep. This only lasted until he was six months old, then I/we transitioned him to a co-sleeping situation. His crib was open at the head of our bed. It worked well.
He just made five years old and goes to sleep in his own room. He may or may not sleep in his own bed. Often we find him between us in the wee hours of the morning after he's crawled in bed with us. It's sublime.
Welcome to fatherhood. I'm pretty sure this is par for the course. I like to think so, anyway.
Wow, a very common feeling in parenthood. This advice probably worked better in California than in the land of cold, but getting outside for a walk really helped. Strollers or slings or whatever. Movement helps increase parental patience, and the walk makes you feel you are doing *something* which relieves frustration. And sometimes it helps the kid calm down/fall asleep.
Of course, the weather in California varied from nice to a bit damp, so it was easier to dress the kid for the expedition. YMMV.
I guess that was too easy.
"What's your biggest failing as a lover to date?"
On second thoughts... no, thanks.
OK, on topic: with our now 6 year-old, vibrations from the dryer, or a car ride*, worked. With Keiran (now 3 months, almost) I have thus far had 'daddy magic' and he calms as soon as I hold him, basically. Which is pretty cool, but I am under little illusion that it will last. He also enjoys my singing. Now there's a good reason to have kids.
[*Common, apparently, but not the most useful solution!]
We have the opposite problem. Ours slept great as a baby. The older he gets, the harder it is to get him to go to bed. He's ten and we're lucky if the kid is asleep before 10:30. He's tired, but god damn it that kid fights off sleep like he's afraid he won't wake up.
I went with hearing protection with my son. That way, I was calmer and not so anxious to stop the screaming now.
The answer is "I get frustrated too easily."
We all do. My kids both gave up naps by eighteen months and my daughter (who is nearly six) frequently doesn't fall asleep until 9 or 10 despite the fact that the school bus arrives rather early.
In any case, kids, despite their awesomeness, are frequently frustrating. Just wait until SteelyKid learns to talk.
Our eldest was truly a nightmare for getting to bed, which continued well past her first birthday. Once asleep it was unusal for her to sleep more than 6 hours straight through and even then there would be at least one waking incident. And hysterical crying fits for no readily apparent reason were the norm for at least the first 6 months. I am still not sure how we all survived.
Now she'll sleep 12 hours straight and it's a struggle to get her up in the morning for school :)
This makes my going away next Monday for work a very exciting proposition, as either I will have to leave the night before or at o-dark-hundred in the morning (depending on the weather).
Frustratingly, she'll sleep in the swing at daycare, but that stopped working for us a while ago. Maybe we should talk to them and see what exactly they're doing and adopt it (and maybe move the swing somewhere with a door that shuts, so the dog can't lick her face when she's in it . . . ).
Oh, and we use the hair dryer instead of the clothes dryer, since the bathroom is much, much nicer than the basement (for one thing, the ceiling on the basement is about a foot lower than Chad's head.)
I totally know what you mean about the finite life-times of "tricks that work". Incidentally, for the white noise thing, we actually recorded a hair-dryer as five minutes of MP3 track, and played this through speakers from an MP3 player set to loop-mode. Then that trick stopped working too. But it was nice while it lasted, and better than having the hair-dryer actually running for longish periods...
It seems like yesterday that I was driving my baby boy around and around the block to get him to sleep. And here I am, back from the Department of Motor Vehicles having (as a favor to him, now 19, while he slept late) gotten Proof of Insurance and waited on line and paid to renew his car registration and get that magic sticker for his license plate. By the time I'm a grandfather, will we have those flying cars from the Jetsons?