Bedtime blues for Alby, bedtime brooding for Mama

Today I had a work event to attend and so, after an early morning cuddle and feed I left Alby in the care of his grandparents and headed off to Birmingham.  It was 6:30am when I left the house (in deep fog) and just gone 8pm when I got home.  Returning home little man was upstairs, sitting with his Poppa in his bedroom in the dark, having a cuddle and crying his little eyes out.  They had tried his bottle, they had tried rocking him in the pushchair, they had tried reading to him, he simply wasn’t going to give up.

We calmed him down and I picked up our normal bedtime routine of a story and feed.  Within about two minutes his eyes had shut, but he wasn’t going to be put down that easily.  It was another 25 minutes before he finally broke the latch and allowed me to place him in his cot.

His reluctance to sleep for others always sparks a web of thoughts in my head about parenting and the role of mother, the role of father, nursing and nurturing, unconditional love, support, development and learning.

Since Alby’s birth I have overseen bedtime.  This is more due to circumstance than anything else – Mark’s schedule over the past year was so manic he was rarely home for a whole week let alone longer.  On the few occasions when I haven’t been around for bedtime I have come home to Alby awake and playing, awake and crying or asleep in front of the telly in his pushchair.  Now Alby is perfectly happy to be left with others all day long – I’ve never had a call from nursery and his Granny stated that he (and Percy) were “perfect” all day.  But when bedtime comes it’s as though his little brain suddenly stops and says “Hold on, where’s that Mama lady?  No going to bed without Mama.” 

Over Mark’s summer holidays, when he had four weeks off from work, I seriously considered giving him the responsibility of bedtime.  I would remove myself from the scene, we would probably have a few days of tears, but then Alby would have settled into Daddy’s ways.  The reason we never went down this track is because we could cope with a week of tears, we could rejoice at a week of Alby and Daddy bedtimes, but then Mark would be gone and we’d be back at the start line.  Is it really worth distressing him for a week only to go full circle?  I don’t think that it is, and yet that doesn’t stop the conversation.

Years ago, when my niece was just a toddler, we got together for a family lunch and I remember vividly that whenever she was upset for whatever reason she would run to her mum.  Dad simply wasn’t good enough - it had to be mummy.  And I found that very sad.  I always wanted my children to know that they could and should be able to go to Mark or myself equally.   I’m a competitive person but I can say, hand on heart, that I’m not in competition with my husband for Alby love.  You hear of women who struggle to hand things over to their husbands because of how keenly they feel the bond with their child and how terrified they are of that slipping.  I don’t hang onto bedtime for my own gain.  There are many things about parenting that I had no sense of before Alby came along and I have had to change my views and beliefs quite radically in some areas.  But this is an area I still believe very strongly in.  And despite circumstances being stacked against me it is an area I will work on to achieve a balance.  To let Alby know that I’m just one half of the parenting team and that the other half is just as good – if not better.  Lordy only knows how, but we’ll get there because I’m not having Alby run to me if he can run to Daddy too.