Hey, other parents? I need you to all stop lying to me about how your kids sleep in cribs. It’s really not cool.
I get that, as parents, we have to lie about some things just to get through the day – that little Johnny has never bitten anyone before he bit my kid, for example. But this crib thing has got to stop. It is total nonsense, and you all know it.
Sure, I’ve seen babies sleeping in cribs on TV and in glossy magazine ads. I know that crib-sleeping is a thing that people at least believe to be true. I just don’t believe it actually happens.
What’s my evidence, you say? Well, skeptical one, from the minute I brought both of my kids home from the hospital (where they failed to sleep more than two hours at a time in that little plastic bassinet), neither of them has ever let me put them down in a crib.
The first month, they both slept on me. Months two to age 3.2, my son slept in our bed. That changed when his little sister was born. Now he sleeps in his bedroom…with his dad. Baby Mabel and I? We sleep in a king-sized bed together.
“Well sure…” you think. “You must be some giant hippie who digs woven wraps and cloth diapers. You probably cure your babies’ clogged tear ducts with tons of groovy breast milk. Of course you co-sleep!”
Okay, you got me on the cloth diapers and the breastmilk thing, but the co-sleeping? That was never part of the plan!
See, I like sleep. You’re talking to a gal who called 9 p.m. bedtime at middle school sleepovers. As a 22-year-old, I’d need a solid 10 hours a night just to roam around NYC and be angsty. If putting my kids in a crib netted me more sleep, I would do it in a heartbeat. But it doesn’t.
Whenever I tried to put baby Harvey or baby Mabel down in our crib, no matter how sleepy or even fast asleep they’d be, the second their butts hit the mattress, they would spring awake, bucking and screaming, looking at me with shock in their eyes as if to say, “Betrayal! I never expected this from you, Warm-one-with-the-milk!”
After weeks of this, curling up next to them in the bed wasn’t a choice. It was a posture of defeat.
Like a fool, I turned to my friends for advice. This is where the lies become apparent. “Anna” told me that she practiced putting her baby down when she was asleep, then just sleepy, and then totally awake. At the end of this exercise, her baby just fell asleep in the crib with a gentle smile on her face.
Anna is a dirty liar. Here’s what happens to me when I try this FAKE technique:
I put baby down in the crib, asleep. She wakes up and cries.
I put her down in the crib, sleepy, but not asleep. She shakes off sleep and cries.
I put her down in the crib fully awake. She cries and screams.
I assume the posture of defeat.
I call on you, Anna, and all you other moms and dads: STOP WITH THESE LIES!
I decided to go deeper and confront a mom-friend head on:
SHE DOESN’T DENY IT.
Go ahead. Tell me your kids sleeps in a crib all night. There’s no proof. Show me a photo of your kid in her crib. How do I know you didn’t just put her in there and take a photo? Show me a video of her sleeping in a crib. Could be CGI. Invite me over to watch her sleep in her crib. All night. a) That’s creepy, b) I have two kids and I work full time, and c) I don’t have time for that nonsense and you know it, so it’s an empty threat.
YOU ARE BUSTED.
Here is a list of my friends whose kids also will not sleep in cribs.
Amelia.
Angelica.
Deanna.
Monica.
Yes, these are fake names. But they stand for real moms. Moms who aren’t afraid of the truth. The truth that no child sleeps in a crib. Call me a crackpot. Call me a crazy person. How many men and women before me have had similar insults hurdled at them just for pulling the wool off society’s eyes?
I call to you, other parents, to stop this lie now, for the sake of all future generations who suffer trying to get their children to sleep in a crib only to fail and think there is something wrong with their own parenting instead of the truth – that cribs are a lie invented by Big Crib and perpetrated by jerks.
Face the truth. Stop the lies. And join me by dragging that useless crib out into the middle of a field and burning it!*
Because it better not just be me.
*Having my husband drag that useless crib to the curb after calling the sanitation department of Medford, MA, to make an appointment to haul it away like a responsible citizen.
ParentCo.
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