How to get a 4-month-old baby to sleep with Tolkien, Monty Python and The Cranberries
BarcelonaA former colleague told me not long ago that she was surprised when she heard I had a daughter because she'd never seen me as "a reproductive man." I laughed. It didn't seem like an insult, but rather a description. And, in fact, that possibility had always been there. The idea of having children amused me, but until recently it was an abstract and distant concept.
Now Bruna is about to turn four months old, and I can't imagine life without her.
The most striking example of how things have changed is, perhaps, our evenings. Before, I'd leave work and go for a drink, or we'd go out to dinner with Ona, or at home we'd watch a series after dinner, or I'd read. Now, I usually get home and we have to put Bruna to sleep. And there's only one almost foolproof method: Ona's breasts. But I don't have that superpower. Imagination, desperation, and advice from other parents have led me from the Pilates ball to The Cranberries, by way of J.R.R. Tolkien, Monty Python, and The reapers
At first, I tried to get her to sleep by swinging her while she whined in my ear. But if calmness is contagious, so is tension. And it didn't end well. Over time, things have improved, and I've refined the technique, which always has one basic premise: I only know how to get her to sleep in my arms, and upright. If I put her in the crib, she usually tells me to go to sleep myself with an angry cry capable of waking the neighbors.
Going for walks with her in the baby carrier usually works, but at certain times it's quite a chore. The first alternative method was bouncing on Ona's Pilates ball with Bruna in my arms. I don't know how many times the neighbors saw my head bouncing up and down in front of the window, or what they thought.
When the ball stopped working because Bruna got tired and so did my back, I tried walking up and down the house with her in my arms. Nothing. One day, in desperation, I remembered Monty Python and their recurring gag about the Ministry of Absurd Raisins. A scathing critique of the bureaucracy in which citizens presented a bureaucrat with a completely implausible way of walking—one silly walk—to get a grant to develop it. Illuminated by lack of sleep, I started taking uneven and utterly useless strides around the house. I don't know if she fell asleep out of fear, but it worked.
The music works
After a few days, I began to suspect that a neighbor would eventually call the police. And, since I had read that the best way to get a baby to sleep was to calm them down—and Bruna loves it when we tell her things—I started reading to her. The Lord of the RingsOnce she calmed down, she would listen intently for a long time. She likes it, even though she doesn't understand anything yet. But if she was already agitated and I didn't hold her tightly, it only made her angrier. I still read to her occasionally, and when she's a little older and can understand, I'll start again. But it wasn't the solution.
The saying goes that music soothes the savage beast, so I tried to sing. Anyone who knows me knows it couldn't go well: in elementary school, I was often made to do what they called "the little fish." When the others sang, I would open and close my mouth like a dying sea bass out of water. The result is that I only know one song: The reapersAnd I didn't learn it in school. It helped a little, the music works, but it wasn't the right kind.
After going through Tom Waits, Miles Davis, and PJ Harvey, I ended up with a Cranberries record. The first side of Dreams: The Collection It's become, for now, the soundtrack I use to help Bruna fall asleep. And it works. When I dim the light and put it on, she starts to calm down. This already helps a lot, but I combine it with pacing up and down the room, rocking her gently. For now, she falls asleep. And there's nothing like falling asleep with her on top of me, feeling her breathe and drool on my shoulder.