Let Sleeping Moms Lie
Hush little baby man, I'll let you know when you've had enough
Nothing makes a parent feel more like Fred Flintstone sliding down the tail of a dinosaur than slinking out of your sleeping kid’s room after completing a successful bedtime routine. There is no routine more practiced, more precise, or more feared than The Bedtime Routine.
The bedtime routine in our house has changed over the years, but it’s still very much a routine and still very much feared.
As a baby we:
read
shushed
swung (not that kind of swinging and never in front of a baby, weirdo!)
swaddled
screamed into the abyss
As a toddler we added:
snuggling
making up stories about bad kids named Kicky Karla and Disappointed Dennis who tormented a daycare until my son swooped in and saved them
As an older kid the repertoire greatly expanded to include:
reenacting scenes from Cobra Kai with stuffed animals
playing a card or board game
playing digital games like Wordle, Waffle, and Connections
sharing playground gossip
G.I. Joe action figure battles
ordering more LED lights so his bunk bed could look like the set of a Twitch streamer
These routines took anywhere from six minutes to two hours, but there was always one constant: me.
The child likes having someone stick around as he falls asleep. Always has. I don’t get it personally as I have more of a “cat on the verge of death” attitude about going to bed. Don’t look at me, don’t follow me, just leave me alone, and goodbyeeeeeee! Sometimes I fantasized about tough-loving my way out of this, maybe setting a timer and bolting after fifteen minutes. Our house is small. Even if I sat in my office, I would still only be seventeen feet from his bed. Couldn’t he call upon some of those self-soothe tactics he learned as a baby?
Then one night it was as if he could read my listless, slacker mind, but also knew how easy it was to manipulate, he whispered 5 little words that lured me right back in.
“I feel safe with you.”
Me, I thought? This girl? The one who hid behind the neighbor’s garbage can and cried when she thought her son got his finger shut in a car door. The one who blacks out at the site of blood, snot, loose teeth, and barf? The one who takes a remarkably long time becoming upright once she is laying down. You feel safe with her? Man, kids have zero survival skills!
If at anytime during the night the child has a nightmare or hears a noise or doesn’t feel well, he makes his way to my side of the bed. He literally passes his able-bodied father to get to me. Before so much as a whimper passes his lips, I jolt awake screaming, WHAT’S WRONG????
“How do you do that?” he asked once. “You always know I’m there before I even wake you.”
It is a gift, sweetest child.
Incompetence aside, I’m still very much a part of the current bedtime routine. My son makes room for me to lie down next to him in his tiny twin bed. Even when a friend is in the top bunk, he does this little pat pat pat on the mattress signaling it’s time for me to join him. Sleepovers are the best because I I get double the playground gossip!
It’s not all bad, but it is my job as a martyr mother to make damn sure my husband thinks it is. After the word puzzles and books, my son falls asleep and I get to visit all my favorite home design Instagram influencers and help them earn commissions on my purchases of things like an acrylic box to store kitchen garbage bags or an Art Deco doorknob or carb-less, sugar-less, fat free bagels. I’m very susceptible to consumerism when I’m relaxing.
My husband does his part and pretends to pity me for being “stuck” in our son’s bed. He walks by, makes an “aw shucks, sorry!” face and then hops along to work on his novel or watch some Sci-Fi series on Netflix. I roll my eyes and shrug like, What am I supposed to do??? Sometimes it sucks being loved this much! But yes, sometimes I am bitter because that should be me on the couch basking in glow of some house-flipping drama or organizing all the little acrylic boxes under my kitchen sink. But again, I am a martyr mother.
I knew this wasn’t forever. Not one kid I met in college brought his mom to help him fall asleep. In fact, our days were definitely numbered according to my mom friends. One with a son my kid’s age told how she was recently booted from the bed.
“He told me he wanted to read alone,” she said. “He just closed the door on me one night and that was it. I’m free.”
To that I screamed, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU EVIL WITCH!”
In my head.
Out loud I congratulated her and said things like Wow, lucky! Someday…here’s hoping!
And not three days later as we were preparing for the routine, I had our Judy Blume book and Wordle cued up on the phone when my son strong-armed me and said, “I think I need more room.”
Bart and I froze.
“What?!” we asked. “Whatever do you mean, sweet, confused child?”
“I just want more room,” he said. And then sending a dagger right into my soul added, “You don’t have to—”
“Oh my god, don’t say it!” Bart screamed. He was literally shaking.
My son looked like he saw a ghost. In fact, he had. The Ghost of Mommy Past. The spirit of a woman who used to be needed. The specter of a middle-aged lady mom replaced by more room.
I knew something was wrong with my face. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it. I kept trying to move it to into a more neutral, even pleased formation, but it was stuck. No child should see their mother like this!
Did I feel dampness around my eyeballs? For cripes sake, was my lip quivering? My grotesque, pathetic, sorrow-filled face belied the truth! I didn’t do this for him. I did it for me.
If the visual me wouldn’t cooperate, the verbal me needed to step up. I forced out a laugh. Words like, Cool! No problem! Great news! Of course you need more room! I don’t want to the right side of my body to be covered in farts anyway oh hahahhahhahaha farts! As hard as I tried (and I did try!) to make light of this emotional barbarity, that sweet, sensitive, tween empath saw right through it. He hurt his mom’s feelings and as punishment he would be stuck with me forever. I wonder where we were going to college.
“I”m just kidding!” he shouted. “I meant I needed a bigger room! Or a bigger bed! So we can both fit it in!”
“I don’t think mom is ready for this!” Bart said, chuckling. Chuckling! Like a goddamn bitchface! Maybe he thought this was good news? Free to spend my evenings watching the uncensored versions of all my favorite Bravo shows on Peacock instead imprinting my butt cheeks on a memory foam mattress. (Another IG influencer influenced purchase.) Our son was in damage control! Couldn’t his father see that???
“No,” the child said, reaching out for me. “I want you here. Right here.”
Pat pat pat.
“It’s all good!” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ll just sit in this very comfortable beanbag on the floor. Or wait, did you mean, I shouldn’t be here at all? I could just…go? It’s totally fine! Really! Whatever you want! Yay. Autonomy! Puberty! Take a wife and get out of here! WHATEVER YOU WANT IT’S ALL GOOD BUDDY!”
“NO! I want you to STAY!”
Sigh…
“Well, I’m not staying,” Bart said. “I have a new season of Love, Death + Robots. Anyone want a cheese plate?”
I know a few things to be true. Kids grow up, independence is good, and the universe is definitely a mom because she did me a solid. It came in the form of a respiratory virus, but a gift is a gift. Don’t look a cosmic gift horse in the mouth or whatever.
The next day my son woke up with a terrible cold. He’s very needy when he’s sick.
You got two days max, the universe spoke. Enjoy them!
At bedtime I pulled out the beanbag ready to take my subordinate place on the floor, but instead I was called up to the big leagues!
“I’d feel more comfortable if you were next to me,” he said.
He had a fever and was hacking up pretty good. Honestly, I would have preferred the beanbag. But I saw how it was. My position has been eliminated, but my institutional knowledge was still needed to finish the project.
I feel safe with you.
“Oh, okay sure,” I said, just oozing nonchalance. “I mean, just until you’re better.”
Two days later he woke up with renewed vigor, back to playing basketball in the hallway and yelling at people on Discord. I had no idea what my future would be that night. Would I be invited on the bed like a good puppy or forced to watch my foam butt cheek imprints solidify and remold from my position on the floor. Even the mattress was forgetting me!
I hovered in the doorway like a vampire waiting to be invited in.
“Why you being weird, Mom?” he asked. “Just come here.”
Pat pat pat.
He thinks I’m weird! He notices me! YES! I was still in! Thank you, Universe!
As I pulled out my phone and brought up Wordle, he took my hand and looked me straight in the eye.
“Mom?”
Oh good lord, no!
“I think I want to… solve Wordle by myself.”
When one door slams in your face another one opens and also slams in your face.
But I remained calm.
“Yes,” I answered. “It is time.”
I handed him my phone and watched over his shoulder thinking I should probably get used to this vantage point.
I feel safe with you too.
But wow, his starting word needs work.
XO,
Shelly
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Oh my gosh I loved reading this! Thank you.
Bedtime in our house has never really carried the word ‘routine’ along with it 😬 ‘arguments’, yes, ‘tantrums’, definitely (me, obvs), but not ‘routine’. At some point along the way I let go and the kids have managed themselves ever since.
The twins are 15 now and I’m getting that ‘surplus to requirements’ vibe which has probably been going longer than I care to admit! Like you, I’m hanging on to every moment I get. This year brings many changes and I’m determined to be that non-needy supporter... while allowing that sadness to exist.