The baby’s crying.
This must be one of the worst experiences we can have — to be tired, craving a break from it all, to maybe have some sleep ourselves… And the baby’s crying.
There is another experience we might have… That wonderful silence when the baby is asleep. It comes as a gift… Then we have a dilemma — whether to rush about doing all sorts of stuff we think is important, or to rest…
This issue is about sleep and babies. About your sleep, and your baby’s sleep — because both are important aspects of a family’s well-being. There would be no books or articles about sleep — and certainly no such thing as sleep clinics — if there were no problems with sleeping. But adults increasingly report that a good night’s sleep is elusive — and then the baby comes along…
You might want your child to allow space for your needs — but babies don’t work like that. It isn’t their brief to meet your needs in this regard. The solutions however may not come out of preoccupation with the problem, but rather out of appreciating the wider world of having a child in your life. I think here of a guiding aphorism for my life, from Dag Hammarskjöld’s diary Markings:
"To say Yes to life is at one and the same time to say Yes to oneself... Yes — even to that element in one which is most unwilling to let itself be transformed from a temptation to a strength."
Parenting is exhausting, especially when a baby is not sleeping (actually, your baby will be sleeping, but perhaps not as you would wish!). But we can exhaust ourselves further through our versions of ‘no-saying’ and ‘me-saying’. There is a path towards reality that proceeds from wonder, via reverence, through an awareness of wisdom-filled harmony with the world, to self-surrender. This is a path of conscious loving, of devotion to the truth of the world. We still are likely to be tired, but renewed strength may come when we can say Yes.
[John Allison - editorial from September issue of { parent-theses }]
