I read somewhere that when we sleep at night, we continuously cycle through shallow & deep phases of sleep, nearly waking or waking momentarily during the shallow phase. When the latter happens, we adults are able to fall back asleep so quickly that most of us don’t even realize we are awake or recall it in the morning. Babies, on the other hand, have to learn this skill, and until they do, they’ll cry for help getting back to dreamland — help in the form of rocking, nursing, soothing sounds, etc. Basically, help in the form of Mom. This is one reason for “sleep training” a baby, so he/she doesn’t require help falling back asleep and can sleep through the night.
We are lucky that James is a relatively good sleeper. A few weeks ago, though, due to a change in routine and perhaps a growth spurt, he hit a rough patch and required a lot of cuddling to fall back asleep… and cuddling with me, specifically, as opposed to with Eric. It’s pretty amusing that time and time again, when Eric was unsuccessful at soothing James, the exact moment that he handed the baby over to me, James stopped crying. Eric would sigh, “Really?? Seriously!?” Haha… perks of being the mom, I guess. Anyway, we suspected that it has something to do with my smell, so one day we tried giving James one of my shirts to sleep with. When he stirred, I got ready to pick him up as usual, when what do you know… James drew my shirt to his face, took a big whiff of it, and magically calmed down without needing me to take him out of the crib. It worked: James fell back asleep on his own!! And it keeps on working today!! Sometimes if my shirt is just out of reach, we’ll sneak in and help drop it on his face… and 90% of the time his body immediately relaxes and he falls back asleep. It’s MAGIC!
To be the only person in the world that can calm James down is endearing, but sometimes inconvenient. To have discovered this trick which enables Eric to help, and even James to help himself, was GENIUS!! It is still endearing but also somewhat funny to know that my smell is so powerful and intoxicating to someone. What’s more, after he sniffs my shirt for a day or two, it no longer smells like Mom, but smells like Baby, and I have to do a switch with him. I reclaim my shirt and put it on to renew the smell, and give him the fresh one off my back. Haha. How awesome to know that my son thinks I have the best smell in the world!
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