At first holding her sideways and ssshing loudly in her ear worked. Then wearing her in the Moby wrap while bouncing up and down was key. Most recently it was rhythmically patting her on the back while listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash. I’ve devised countless surefire ways to get my six-week-old daughter to sleep, only to have them stop working the next day.
“But you loved this yesterday!” I wailed the other morning at 8am as I bounced in circles around my kitchen with Lily’s head resting on my shoulder.
Trying to get a newborn to stop fussing and let everyone have some much-needed rest is exhausting. Sometimes it takes minutes, other times it’s hours. And it’s frustrating when you think you’ve got it all figured out, only to discover that the method you’ve finally mastered no longer soothes your baby.
The worst part is I don’t give myself a break when I get one—like when my husband comes home from work. Instinct tells me to hand over the baby and flee to the bathroom (the only place where I can get some privacy) with a glass of wine. But the micromanager in me can’t seem to let go.
“She doesn’t like that anymore,” I say, lurking in the background as my husband cradles her while swaying back and forth (that was so last week!). “Try turning on Pandora to the Simon and Garfunkel station and slow dancing with her on your shoulder,” I offer, her cries mounting. “That worked for us this morning.”
He stares back at me, unmoved. “Fine. Then you do it,” he says, holding her out to me.
He’s right, of course. My husband has his own ways of soothing our daughter to sleep, and what works for me doesn’t always work for him. Still, that doesn’t keep me from wanting to obsessively share any new bits of information I gleaned during the day while he was at work.
Fortunately, there is one fail-safe way to calm her: the vacuum. If we plug in our Dyson and simply stand beside it, Lily magically stops crying and often falls asleep. It’s like a white noise machine on steroids.
The downside is that it’s inconvenient and even awkward, especially considering we have a toddler son to take care of and should ideally be able to hear him without the noisy vacuum blaring in the background.
“Mommy’s just going to stand by the vacuum with Lily for a few minutes,” I tell him at least once a day, sorry that things have come to this. “Okay,” he says innocently, oblivious to the fact that living one’s life with a constant ambient roar is not normal. When he approaches me—usually to tell me something about one of the many trucks he’s been pushing across the carpet—I just give him an enthusiastic thumbs up, unable to decipher what he’s saying over the noise.
But my husband resorts to the vacuum too quickly for my taste. He disappears into the bathroom where we keep it plugged in before trying other methods first. “That’s it, I’m using the vacuum,” he says after 30 seconds of baby jiggling to no effect.
“It shouldn’t be the first thing you try!” I exclaim, worried we’re creating a bad habit that will be hard to break.
“Then you take her,” he’ll say once again, holding our lovely but very fussy daughter.
Ultimately, I know this is just a phase that will pass. Her newborn fussiness will eventually fade away and, with it, the need for our convoluted soothing methods. But when you’re in the thick of caring for an infant, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel to the time when you’re baby will actually be able to put herself to sleep.
In the meantime, at least we’ll have a really clean house: I’ve finally embraced the Dyson and started actually vacuuming the floors as I soothe my daughter’s cries away. (My son helps by following closely behind me with the brush attachment.) Now if only I could find a way to calm her while loading the dishwasher and doing the laundry!
Leah Black is the former executive editor of New York Family. She and her husband are the proud parents of two-year-old Avi and baby Lily.
