Rigid things break more easily. This is what I’ve found out.

When P was less than 3 months old we hired a sleep consultant who taught us a bunch of hard and fast rules about baby sleep. We implemented them and it worked. P was sleeping two 6-hour stretches in the night. I smugly thought I had this whole parenting thing figured out. (Oh, the foolishness!)

Then P developed severe eczema and the sleep rules no longer worked because she was so itchy and uncomfortable. She couldn’t fall asleep because she itched and she woke herself up with the itching, often with bloody scratch marks across her face or chest to prove it (and sometimes every 10-20 min. throughout the night).

From the moment I went into labor I felt out of control. As the sleepless nights continued, the bouts of mastitis came and went, and the bumbling nature of new parenthood set in, the feeling only intensified.

So when we followed the strict sleep rules and they worked, I felt such relief. I felt like I finally had a little bit of control over my life again.

But when sleep fell apart I panicked. It was my only area of dominion in the crazy sea of parenting.

I stuck to the rules because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought if we just followed them perfectly somehow they’d work. And each time if we wavered, or someone else caring for P wavered, I went nuts. I made myself and everyone else around me completely crazy because I was so rigid.

I realized I really had a problem after yelling at Mike in the middle of the night on Valentine’s Day because he wasn’t sticking to the rules and instead was, God forbid, using his instincts to soothe our itchy, screaming daughter.

I realized I’d lost myself in my pursuit of control.

I’d abandoned my inner voice in order to follow the rules of some sleep consultant I’d never even met who hadn’t ever met my daughter.

It was not a proud moment.

So I “quit” the sleep program and started doing what worked and felt good instead of what I was supposed to be doing.

P didn’t magically start sleeping through the night. And her skin didn’t magically clear up.

But I felt like myself again. And I wasn’t driving Mike, our nanny, my mother, and everyone else around me crazy anymore.

I felt soft. I felt flexible.

Rules or no rules, we still have challenges around sleep and itchy skin at our house. (I’ve tried everything from radical changes to my diet, every cream imaginable, seeing an allergist, and even a Shamanic Soul Retrieval, just so you know.)

But when there’s a particularly rough night or our childcare providers wait longer between naps than I would have, I don’t freak out anymore.

I don’t break. I’m not so brittle because I’m not so rigid. My insomnia disappeared, and I’m crying more tears of joy than tears of despair.

I see now that I simply can’t control the experience of being a mother. Following strict sleep rules didn’t end up giving me the control I was so desperate for. They just made me brittle.

I still feel out of control. But rather than getting edgy about it, grasping for dear life at any promise of predictability, I’m softening into the experience.

It’s not easier, per se, but I don’t feel so anxious all the time. I feel whole again, and that’s really something.

Here’s what I now know:

• We cling to rules because they offer a false promise of control.

• All we’re really in control of is how we respond to life.

• Responding to life by following strict rules makes us rigid.

• Rigid stuff breaks easily.

• Soft stuff doesn’t.

May we all do our best to be made of the soft stuff for it’s in our softness that we find wholeness. {Tweet It!}

 

OVER TO YOU:

Can you relate? What area of your life could you soften into to become less breakable? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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