Notes From the Trenches (Day 3)

You know that saying, “whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”? It’s total crap. You know what makes you stronger? Sleep. Sleep makes you stronger. And I am weak today.

Day 2 ended with our first night since Lilly realized that her binky had been vandalized and, in all honesty, it went better than expected. As I noted on the evening of Day 2, bedtime didn’t start out well. Lilly screamed for a good two hours before finally allowing Dad to comfort her enough to fall asleep around 9:30. She was up at 10:30, back down with comforting from Mom at 11. Then . . . radio silence! At least for a few hours. Amazingly, she made it through the rest of the night without comforting from us, but that’s not to say she was sleeping soundly. Or that I was either.

The nice thing about this technique is that, although it is difficult for Lilly to be disappointed and frustrated with her heretofore reliable old friend, Binky, she doesn’t project any of that frustration onto me because she doesn’t realize I am the mastermind behind her binky’s undoing. It’s quite sad actually. I — surprise, surprise — am racked with guilt about it. Here I am sympathizing with her that “these darn binkies are open for some reason and I just don’t know how to fix them, Sweetie.” All the while knowing that I, Evil Binky Torturer, am the source of their deformity.

So here’s what I learned during our first night of Operation De-Binkification. If you are the kind of person  — read: me — who thinks that the best way to work through guilt is to subject yourself to some similar discomfort — don’t do it — such as listening closely to a baby monitor all night  — seriously, do not do it — so that you can hear and sympathize with each and every instance of frustration when your baby misses her old binky, well, I just can’t say this strongly enough: JUST DON’T DO IT.

If I had just kept the monitor off, as I had been for weeks before we started this Operation, I would have most likely slept through Lilly’s minor stirrings through the night. I would have woken up and thought, “You know, bedtime started out pretty rough, but that wasn’t so bad!”  But no. I glued myself to the monitor and spent the night fighting back tears each time I heard Lilly’s tired and frustrated “noooo” and the binky hit the mattress, followed by some whimpering. Hers, not mine. Mostly.

The real zinger is that Lilly was probably only awake for a total of maybe 20 minutes over the course of the night (once she finally fell asleep). I, on the other hand, slept for maybe 20 minutes because each time she whimpered and went back to sleep, I stayed up for another hour or so wondering if it would really be so bad if she was the only teenager who sleeps with a binky.

So I guess the take-away on Day 3 is that the technique seems to be working. Lilly is slowly detaching from her binky. Sure, I am slowly detaching from reality also, but it’s a small price to pay to keep the orthodontist away.

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Next Up: Still in the Trenches (Day 4)

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