On Being Clueless

The world of academia has tended to brand me as a smart girl. Though... I have also been told that there is quite the distinction between being 'smart' and being 'clever'. Having a baby sure makes you feel like you are not very clever. Let me rephrase that. Having a baby sure makes you feel so completely and utterly clueless.

When I was twelve years old, I took part in a problem-solving competition called 'Tournament of Minds', where small groups of high achieving students from particular districts had to work together for a term to solve one problem. I don't quite remember the problem that was posed to my group... something about aliens, no gravity, magnets and food... And there was a disastrous papier mache' attempt involved somehow. How is this relevant? Well, anytime there is a problem that needs to be solved in my day-to-day life, I say to myself, 'Tournament of Minds, Johanna'. There was a time when some authority figures must have deemed me capable of taking part in such a thing, you see, and so therefore I surely can't be quite as clueless as I feel almost all of the time. One thing I really didn't expect with this whole child-rearing business is the intensity of problem-solving that is required for such a large proportion of the day -- problem solving in such a high-stress, adrenalin-ridden situation, often where the person you love more than you thought humanly possible is suffering in some way or another. This is bloody hard.

At the moment, and I presume this is the same for many many many new parents out there, sleep is the holy grail. The seemingly infinite hours that you spend attempting to get your baby to go to sleep are unimaginable. And then, when your little terror is finally sleeping soundly, you simply lay there in bed, a total insomniac, trying to think of the ways that you could get your baby to sleep better in the future. Ridiculous. Without being too melodramatic, I... alrighty, so I will be melodramatic. But it's how I'm feeling. Being melodramatic, I feel like a total and utter failure when it comes to training Ruben to sleep. There are so many different approaches to teaching babies to sleep, and after another week of him waking between eight and twenty times a night, I am at the end of my tether. There is no way, though, that I will attempt the 'cry it out' sleep-training programme, but I feel at a loss. The baby book I have for Ruben has a section for me to fill in 'Eliminated night feeding at ___ weeks". Umm... excuse me? Weeks? I'm expecting a three-digit response to that one.

Co-sleeping? Great for some! There's a reason why I'm the one taking this photo...

Despite the research I do (the many people I speak to, the books I read, the websites I visit, the experts I consult), I still don't know what to do with my boy. Despite trying so many different approaches, I feel as though our problem is consistency. It's just that... after three weeks of not sleeping, if you know that your bean will fall asleep on the bottle and do it in the blink of an eye, it's hard to put yourself through another night's torture and stay strong, without a bottle. It's just that... after three weeks of not getting any time to yourself whatsoever, it's hard not to pick your baby up when they wake from a nap so that they will fall asleep again and you get another half an hour. To do laundry. Or make his food. Or actually eat some lunch. Or organise Christmas presents for the family in Australia. Or do more research on baby sleep habits. Or whine in a blog post. I know that the only thing I'm doing consistently is shooting myself in the foot, but survival is always just one day at a time.

Falling asleep on me, in the nuddy = wrong!

Sleeping on the couch in the nuddy = wrong!

Surely there are so many things wrong with this...

Breaking all the rules - A big teddy to stop him rolling onto his tummy and waking up, a make-shift bumper to stop his dummy from dropping onto the ground and waking him up... = Wrong! Though... he is asleep in his bed...

The Scandinavians have their babies sleep outside in the 'fresh' air. This was working a treat until my snowy accident...

Tournament of minds, Johanna. Tournament of minds.

 Right! Though we only managed this one time. Ever.