“Enjoy it while you can”, “It gets easier”, “This too shall pass” and more unhelpful phrases.
Bradley is a terrible sleeper, always has been – he didn’t sleep through the night until well after his 2nd birthday. Which means WE didn’t sleep either.
It. was. rough.
For this entire period we kept encountering the same two questions: “Was Bradley sleeping through the night yet?” and “When will you have another baby” (I’ll cover that second question in a different post because I have a lot to say about that)
Anyway, people would ask me about his sleeping, and I’d reply honestly (because I’m all about honesty) and instead of engaging in the conversation I’d get these very unhelpful phrases,
“Oh enjoy these moments they won’t last forever”
“This too shall pass”
And my absolute favourite …. “Insert unhelpful advice I have already tried and in no way asked for”
Now I am fully aware that these people were just trying to help, and I really do appreciate what they were trying to do – but you see after 2 years I had heard all those unhelpful phrases, I had tried all the unsolicited advice. I had read books, and articles and tried every fad “sleep training” thing I could think of (IT WASN’T WORKING) …. and yet no one wanted to talk through the horrible moments with me and let me express my feelings. To me if felt like they just wanted to gloss over the entire uncomfortable situation, like they were so scared I was about to express emotions and needed to shut it down quickly.
BUT that’s what I needed to do, I needed to vent – I needed to cry and scream and let it all out because to me it didn’t feel like it was ever going to end – remember sleep deprivation and over emotional-ness (totally a word) doesn’t make for the most rational person. Telling me that it would pass soon, really wasn’t helpful when I was fairly certain it would never end. NEVER END!
(Cue image of me sitting in a corner rocking back a forth muttering things about sleep training)
Because my child was (is) a stubborn troll monster who just wanted to play from 11pm – 4am … for reasons I’m still not quite sure of.
Then a friend of mine did something I will never be able to adequately thank her for, after a particularly rough night I was losing my marbles … she told me to come over and I found myself sitting on the floor of her lounge room and I just exploded all over her and her partner. I let it all out, and they sat there chiming in when they could but mainly just letting me cry and vent and work through it all. And when I was done, she handed me a cup of tea and held my hand and we just sat in silence for a bit drinking tea – and all of my built-up anger and frustration washed away and at that moment I could breathe again.
Now obviously this didn’t fix Bradley’s sleeping habits, it didn’t magically make me less tired. BUT it made me feel heard, understood and supported.
See when all those well-meaning people gave me those well-rehearsed phrases I felt like they were telling me it wasn’t OK to have feelings because I was so lucky to have Bradley, and I should cherish every moment with him, even the ones in the middle of the night. (this may not have been their intentions, but it is what it felt like)
Well, I think it’s totally OK to have those feelings, babies are flipping hard and a baby that doesn’t sleep just makes you feel insane most of the time. Expressing these feelings should be encouraged because it will prevent us from strangling our precious trolls in the middle of the night and ending up in jail – but it also lets other new mothers know that everyone experiences these uncomfortable emotions and that’s OK – and just because you are feeling these things doesn’t mean you love your child any less!
SO
The next time someone opens up to you about how they are struggling with the whole parenting thing, instead of saying “this too shall pass” or “cherish these precious moments they don’t last forever” … why don’t you sit that poor parent down and give them a cup of tea and let them talk … because everything can be fixed with a cup of tea.
ALL HAIL THE CUP OF TEA!
