The Free-Range Child, Problems With

Jump to Comments

It’s true. Pitter is uncaged these days, free to wander, opening the fridge at will for a sippy cup or piece of string cheese, or a bottle of beer that Sweet Cheeks tragically thinks is “up high enough.” Sure, he’s fed mostly-organic foods and is lean, bright-eyed and terribly tasty, but it’s not all good.

And how does one get suckered into parenting raise this variety of free-range toddler?

It all started when Pitter learned how to flip out of his rickety-hand-me-down crib last summer. Side rail up or down, he could catapult over it. I couldn’t bear to purchase a so-called “crib tent” and make a kennel out of his crib. (Ask me about this philosophy for boy #2 and you might notice a twitch over my left eye.)  And so, when Pitter wanted to nurse in the night, he flipped himself up out of his open-topped crib and onto our bed, nursed, and then co-slept. Are you noticing this? Already uncaged and grazing at will at eleven months or so.

Do you see the problem here? When there is no cage, there is no containment. Delicious meat be damned! No one wants the cows and chickens wandering around the house at night!

When Pitter stopped nursing to sleep, Sweet Cheeks and I could not “put” him into his crib awake at bedtime with the expectation that he would actually stay there. Plus there was all of that nasty, snot-nosed wailing and crying and those put-to-sleep-methods were not for us. Instead, we had to snuggle with him in our bed until he fell fast asleep, and then transfer him to his crib, from which he would later evacuate himself for a midnight snack.

When we moved to our house last fall, we abandonded the crib all together and it still sits, disassembled, in the garage where the moving men left it. (Ask me about whether we will reassemble this rickety crib for boy #2 or purchase a steel-enforced dog cage instead and you might notice a twitch over my other eye.) Pitter was still nursing in the middle of the night at this point, so in the interest of more-sleep-for-me-equals-fewer-thoughts-of-self-strangulation, we wedged a double mattress set between our queen bed and the wall for the child. And, he still sometimes nursed to sleep or became very drowsy after the last nursing and we snuggled with him on his bed and were able to have a few hours to ourselves after he fell asleep. It was by no means a perfect plan, but it worked well enough because Pitter was still drugged by the boob.

At Eastertime, we took another step forward and purchased a bed rail and put Pitter’s double bed in his very own room. Nothing about the nighttime routine changed but for the room in which Pitter first fell asleep. He even seemed to like it. Of course, he still woke up in the middle of the night and whined for us to come to him, or trotted into our room and climbed into bed with us.

Sounds like we’re moving forward here, doesn’t it? Yes and no.

Pitter has not nursed at all in three weeks. Squee! Perfect. Great. Truly, exactly the weaning schedule I was aiming for once I got pregnant again. What Sweet Cheeks and I did not aim for was the current bedtime routine, which now goes something like this:

7:15/7:30 Upstairs for bathing, brushing, pjamming, etc.

7:30-8 Stories, looking for doggies out the window, etc.

[You childless people had no idea that washing your face, changing clothes and reading a bit before bed can take up to an hour, did you? Neither did we. Neither did we.]

8-9 pm Snuggling/Ignoring/Singing/Pleading/Cursing/Meditating/Losing Mind in Pitter’s bed with the lights off while he chatters away to himself like a free-range baboon (Is there another kind? Probably not.) or smacks at/climbs on/pokes the lucky adult party sharing his darkened bedroom until he finally finally falls asleep in no less than thirty minutes and no more than an hour.  Oh, and sometimes, you have to use your body to physically barricade the door shut because he doesn’t want to be in his room.

And so you see, our little Free-Range Pitter was born from a mess of choices, both deliberate and lazy. I suppose it really all started with the choice to nurse–it was waaay easier than preparing and hauling about bottles of formula for a woman who doesn’t like carrying more than a wallet and chapstick in her back pocket. Co-sleeping, no crying-it-out, no crib accoutrements, big-boy beds…each choice has contributed to the size of the snowball.

Oh, OH how we long for the day when we can turn out the light and say to Pitter, “Time for bed. Sweet Dreams.”

And close the door. And walk away.

And then sometimes when I pick him up he cups himself against me in that way that infants do, all limp and loving, and I hate that he is already so big and we can never go back, the two of us, to those sweet times together.

Damn kids and their virtuosity at heart-string-pulling. The free-range ones are especially gifted at it. Must be all that exercise.

5 Comments

Filed under breastfeeding, pitter, sleep, woe is me