"Gasp! Your 13-Month-Old Still Sleeps in Your Bed?" - The Pressures of Having a Baby in America

chillibreeze writer — Nisha Giri

NRI: Our Return to India

“Jake pulls himself up in his crib and bawls persistently every night,” complained the mother of a 9-month-old baby, “He cried for 45 minutes last night and then fell asleep holding on to the railing. I was heart-broken, but what could I do?”

I was in a public library, at an infant playgroup with my 13-month-old daughter, and the conversation between the moms had turned to their respective children’s sleeping habits.

“I had the same problem with Olivia,” said another mom, referring to her 7-month-old, “She hated her crib. I had no choice but to go the cry-it-out way. Nothing else would work. She cried for over 30 minutes three days in a row, but on the fourth, she slept right through. Don’t give up on the cry-it-out method. It’s tough on us, but it really works.”

One lady then turned to me and asked if my daughter, the oldest in the group, was sleeping through the night.

“Yes she does mostly,” I replied, paused for a second, and then answered the unasked follow-up question, “She sleeps next to me.”

“Oh!” said my questioner and looked away. But I caught the raised eyebrows which really meant, “What! She STILL sleeps in your bed?”

When I first moved to the USA five years ago, I thought the New World was free from social pressures, unlike in India where you are answerable to every uncle, his wife and her mother. Obviously, I was too wide-eyed back then. It took me a while to realize that the society here is as demanding, except that the pressure is subtle and the emphasis is on completely different matters – often, those that are not even considered an issue back in India.

Like where a baby sleeps. The ‘right’ place for a baby here is in his crib in his room. If, for some reason, this rule cannot be adhered to (which is almost always the case as babies don’t understand rules), an attempt is periodically made to move the baby back to his room. It is invariably a failure as babies are quite persistent, and mothers turn to books and the Internet for help with baby sleeping ‘techniques’. (That’s where you pick up jargon like ‘cry-it-out’, ‘no-cry’, ‘co-sleeping’, ‘baby whispering’ - yes, this last one is a real technique.)

Although co-sleeping – sleeping with the baby – has become quite common these days, or rather more women admit to it now than before, this is usually only a short-term arrangement. The older a child becomes, the pressure to get her off your bed grows exponentially. This is because of the view that privacy for adults is a must or that independence – an extremely important part of American society – has to be instilled at an early age. And for the poor babies, sleeping is the only task that can possibly be accomplished independently.

In my case – although I admit I did try the instill-independence-early practice for a while, with disastrous results – my daughter’s obstinacy easily paid off. I was not about to lose sleep over her lack of bedtime independence. Back home in India, co-sleeping was not a word. (Neither was privacy, but that’s another story.) Everybody ‘co-slept’ – parents, babies, teenagers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and guests too. Living space was so limited that most families could not afford to spare a whole room for the children. As kids, having even an entire wardrobe for ourselves was an unimaginable luxury.

This reminds me of another American baby-related ritual that, unlike the sleep-in-your-own-room syndrome, defies all justification.

When I announced at work that I was expecting, my female co-workers exclaimed, “Awesome! Now you can have fun decorating the nursery.” This would not be as much a social pressure as just an innocent comment, if the issue didn’t pop up at every opportunity and from almost every woman, and some men, that I met.

When I found out I was having a girl it was, “Aww, pink nurseries are so pretty!” (What is it with baby girls and pink?)

When my due date drew closer, it was, “I hope you’re done painting the walls. You don’t want to go into labor with the room still unfinished.”

Everywhere I turned, I was inundated with nursery décor – while shopping, in mailed-out catalogues and coupons, through ideas from friends. Baby must-haves include matching baby furniture, bedding sets, swings, bouncers, playpens, mobiles, rugs, throws, drapes, valances, diaper stackers (I didn’t even know what some of these were at the time), wall pictures, even trash cans. I’m not certain if it’s true, but I’ve been told of women who have kids just so they can decorate rooms and buy stuff for their babies.

But to tell the truth, once I knew I was having a baby, picking out the crib sheets was the least of my troubles. For many women here, mainly those with planned pregnancies, having a baby is an ‘experience’. Not just a shopping experience but they look forward to the actual experience of labor and delivery. And out of this has grown ‘the birthing plan’ – a detailed list of the mother’s labor/delivery preferences that is handed out to the midwife, or nurses in a hospital, and includes information like preferred ambience and relaxation methods, favored birthing position, and other do’s and don’ts.

A direct offshoot of this is the stressful need to make innumerable decisions about your pregnancy and your baby. You have to decide if it will be a doctor or midwife, hospital or the now more fashionable home-birth, epidural or natural, water birth or regular birth, planned c-section or not, breastfeeding or formula, doula or no doula (a person paid to take care of the mother’s emotional needs during labor. This is America in a nutshell!). And after the baby is born, it gets worse – pump or nurse, pacifier or thumb or neither, co-sleep or not, cry or no-cry… the list is endless.

All this just makes me think back about my grandmother’s life. Her family of ten, along with some live-in relatives and a constant inflow of unannounced guests, shared a house that had four tiny rooms including the living room and the kitchen. Cry-it-out was probably the norm for the kids then, not just for bedtime but all the time. Her eight children were born mostly at home.

For her, having a baby was only a short break in her routine cook-and-clean life. I’m sure she had enough troubles and headaches, but making decisions on sleeping techniques was not one of them. Life was simple back then. I sure don’t want to have eight kids, but I wish I could have some of that simplicity back in my life now.

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Nisha writes for Chillibreeze.

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