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It’s 10:26 p.m. when I hear the whimpering sounds coming from the monitor.

“No, not again,” I say to myself. I reluctantly turn toward the screen, and sure enough, he’s awake. I had just spent nearly two hours trying to put my son to sleep, clearly to no avail. It had consisted of a series of light patting, singing and rhythmic shushing. And when that didn’t work, it was followed by 40 minutes of nestling him back to sleep in my arms.

At nearly 9 months old, my son is a shitty sleeper.

Since birth, Julian has never been predictable with his sleep patterns. For daytime naps, it used to take us 45 minutes to get a mere 15-minute catnap out of him, and by night time it was a crap shoot. Occasionally, he would sleep 4-hour stretches, but by 6 months, he fell into this pattern of waking up every hour to nurse. Eventually, I broke him of that habit. He would still wake up two-to-three times a night, but with some gentle patting and a retrieval of his “chupo” (pacifier), he would fall back asleep.

Lately, however, the soft caresses, the quiet melodies, the white noise from his Fisher Price mobile, none of it seems to be working. Even after rocking him back to sleep and laying him down, he wakes up minutes later in complete hysterics.

“He went down easy,” my mother says to me when I first walked out of his room. It was 8:30 p.m. She was sitting on the living room couch, leaning toward my dad, holding his hand. I love seeing that.

“Getting him down isn’t the problem,” I say. “Having him stay down, that’s a whole other story.”

By 8:56 p.m. he was up. But not just gingerly lifting his head up, he was wailing like a prisoner of war, and flailing his arms and legs like a fish out of water. And my need to pick him up, began to take over.

“Three minutes. I will give him three minutes before I go in there.”

Once, a few weeks ago, I tried sleep training: the process of letting babies cry it out. They, the baby experts with the pedagogical powers that be, say to put your baby down in his crib when he’s sleepy, but not asleep. Then, they say to simply walk out. As if my child had the cognitive ability to understand I’m not leaving him for good. As if my heart was molded out of a metamorphic rock (at this rate it might just be, the heat and pressure I feel from trying to do the right thing as a parent could very well be changing my body’s chemical composition.) But I digress.

Then, if he cries (if he cries?! As far as he knows, his caretaker, his human security blanket has just abandoned him in some sort of enclosure never to be seen again), more like when he cries, to give yourself an allotted amount of time before going back into soothe him. And when you do, they suggest comforting him with calming statements like, “Everything is OK.” “I’m here, you’re fine.” “Despite what it seems, I do love you.” Then, you’re supposed to walk back out and increase the amount of time before you go back in. So if the first time was three minutes, the next round will be five. You are to repeat this cycle until he finally falls asleep on his own. And under no circumstances are you to pick him up.

When I tried this tortuous method, it took about 1 hour and 15 minutes before he fell asleep on his own. The aftermath was not pretty. I was a blubbering mess, and my husband and I were in a huge fight. He, being a proponent of sleep training, and I, being against it.

I would say, “How can you listen to this?! You’re heartless! You’re cruel! This is cruel.” He would retaliate with, “This is cruel?! Sticking your baby in a cage, now that’s cruel. This is ensuring our son has good sleeping patterns from here on out!”

They say it takes a week for this sleep training to catch on, and maybe had I given it a week, it would have. But I gave it three days, no more. Psychologically, I was not prepared. Maybe that’s incredibly selfish, but I said to myself, “If he wakes up, I’ll just go in there and pat him back to sleep. So what if it takes two maybe three times a night.”

But last night had been the fourth night in a row that no soothing tactic worked. And so, the internal arguments ensued.

“Why the flying F isn’t he sleeping?! Why aren’t you sleeping?! Don’t pick him. I’m not picking you up.”

His arms reach out to me.

“What am I some sort of monster?! Pick him up! Pick him up! But then he’ll know that I’ll always pick him up. Oh, for the love of God, who cares. It’s all just temporary anyway. Pick him up!”

45 minutes later, I pick him up.

“OK, I’m just going to rock him to sleep. It’ll take 15 minutes, tops.”

30 minutes later.

I lay him down, tip toe toward the door employing a cartoon robber’s gait, and reach for the door knob. Like a member of the bomb squad, I turn the handle with the same steady delicacy I imagine is needed to diffuse an explosive device. I pull the knob, but the door jams. I hear a stifled moan coming from the crib, and I hold my breath. “Oh dear lord.”

OK, false alarm. I continue to pull, metaphorically cutting the blue wire hoping that it’s the right move. The door creaks opens and my human bomb explodes. “Noooooo!”

“For the love of God, please sleep.” I begin the light patting technique. “This is stupid, just pick him up and put him in bed with you. Who cares, he’ll eventually grow out of this.”

“No. I want him to sleep in his crib, in his own room, so I can have some alone time. I just want to unwind and watch a show every once in a while. Is that too much to ask?? This isn’t fair.”

“This isn’t fair?! You’re complaining about not being able to watch a show because your beautiful, perfectly healthy child isn’t sleeping through the night? Families are being persecuted, ripped apart and left to die in Syria, and you’re complaining that you can’t finish an episode of New Girl?! You ARE a monster.” 

He falls asleep.

But at 10:26 p.m. I hear the whimpers.

“Three minutes, I will give him three minutes.”

As I lay on my bed lifeless,  three minutes turn into 20, and the screaming continues. So I walk into his room and walk right out. This time, carrying him. Like a baby sloth gripping to his tree, Julian clings to me.

I walk into my room, and see my husband, who recently arrived from work, sitting on the bed.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do when he’s like this. I don’t know what you want from me,” I say, as the outpour of tears trickle down my face.

“Are you talking to me?” He says, completely caught off guard.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Clearly, you’ve been fighting with yourself tonight, and I’m not joining you.”

Fair enough.

Together, we peel Julian off of me, assure him everything is all right and place him in between the two of us.

Tomorrow is a new day.