Question: Do you know what time the trash truck comes blasting down your street with its twelve-cylinder engine and squealing brakes? Answer: Ten minutes into your baby’s naptime. When is your neighbor going to rev up his smoke-spewing, spastic-throttled leaf blower? Why, as you’re transferring your sleeping infant from his car seat to the crib, of course. How about that guest bedroom phone at your inlaws’ that you forgot to turn off? When is it most likely to blare its electronic Beethoven’s-Fifth-Symphony-ring? Yep. Just after you settle down your colicky newborn from her two-hour crying bender.
The sleep experts Richard Ferber and Marc Weissbluth write about the critical importance of sleep to infants and young children. “Babies shouldn’t be awake for more than two hours at a time for the first few months of life!” they harp. “Get your infant in his crib by the second yawn or he’ll get overtired!”, they command. We read, we obey. Anything to up the sleep quotient in the house. For everyone.
So why won’t the rest of the world get with the program?
When my husband and I had newborns, we put a sign on the door: “Quiet please, sleeping family.” What we were really saying was, ‘hey, nice but CLUELESS FedEx driver, ring this doorbell and incur the hell-fire of a sleep-deprived mother.” Our neighbors, the ones who moved away recently, taped a note across their doorbell to the same effect when their first son was born five years ago. It stayed up until a few months ago when they moved, just before their third child’s birth.
Some say that babies need to learn to sleep amidst loud noises and bright light. This is the real world, they say, so bang pans, open the blinds, and use the power-drill to your heart’s content.
I say, it can be a thin line between making it and almost-not-making-it when you’re a new mom. So tape those newspapers to the windows to block out the light in the hotel room. Swan-dive onto the ringing phone if it will buy you a few more minutes of peace. It’s like the oxygen mask demonstration flight attendants give before the plane takes off. You’ve got to put on your own mask before you can adequately help your child with hers.
There are many things I want to remember about being the mother of young children. Like tender moments shared with my daughter and son. But also general truths about parenthood that are universal, timeless. Like how it feels to have a low-flying helicopter cruise over the house moments after getting both of your vomiting children calmed down at 2 a.m. So that just in case I become a sixty-something chopper pilot, I’ll know to avoid neighborhoods where sleep-strapped parents are putting their little ones to bed. Getting a child to drift into slumber can be like building a house of cards. I won’t be the one blowing it down with my 4-blade rotor.
I will NEVER forget (or forgive) our next door neighbor’s grocery shopping at midnight (for real), zooming back into the driveway from the all-night Kroger, parking her car at her back kitchen door (a mere 6′ from the bed of my darling, formerly sleeping child ) – loudly slamming the car door (driver’s side) of the behemoth station wagon w/sky cruiser accessory feature – opening the back hatch of the wagon, noisily unloading the PAPER bags of groceries – rattling paper bag by rattling paper bag, onto the concrete slab back porch —- even on occasion (in the summer when our bedroom windows were open, natch) tapping the horn for her drug head son to come help her with the rattling PAPER BAGS – opening and closing the aluminum storm door each time: errrrrrreeeeeek ! bang !! errrrrrreeeek ! bang ! (gotta) Love thy neighbor.
I literally almost posted to this effect on my blog on Friday after for the second day in a row during my son’s nap we dealt with:
-a firetruck with sirens blaring that decided also to honk it’s horn loudly just by my son’s window as it passed our home
-a call, text message to my cell and two calls to the home phone…none of which I wanted to answer
-a garbage truck that can’t turn around on our street so it honks while approaching our street, while entering it and while traveling in reverse the entire length of it to be sure no one can rest at 2pm 4 days a week
– the meter reader ringing my doorbell so I could escort him to our meter in the backyard
– several small but very loud planes flying directly above our home at low altitude
Thank you for doing your part to tell these people to keep it quiet between noon and 3pm in neighborhoods littered with small children! 🙂
oh – and another thing about babies and noise: a wise mother once told me it was the THRESHOLD of noise that is the issue – VERY clarifying distinction about noise and baby’s sleep.
So if you are a steel worker and your baby is strapped to your back all day as you bolt bumpers on with your industrial strength pneumatic drill – baby will (if the theory holds) blissfully sleep through the eardrum cracking sound – AS LONG AS THE EARDRUM CRACKING NOISE IS CONSTANT/CONTINUAL. Yes ! Music to baby’s ears !! Like a momma’s soothing lullaby. It’s when your shift is over and you go out to the quiet parking lot that you need to worry about ? OKAY ! GOT IT !!
Holy moly, Carolyn and Amber! You have my sympathy and empathy!
Maybe in the ten minutes before our kids are rudely awakened by noise pollution, we could design some “Baby Bose” earphones for our nappers. I often think I’d be a WAY more informed home buyer now that I have kids. I’d check to see if a prospective house is located along a city or school bus route (in our case, yes and yes), and when/how trash pickup is handled. It’s no coincidence that realtor open houses typically happen on weekends. It’s not just about people being off of work to attend them. It’s about other people being off work whose truck driving/tree-chipping jobs normally shake the homes’ rafters Monday-Friday.
For me the winner was our (adult) neighbor across the street, who liked to play with his remote control monster truck during naptime. Yes, you heard me right.
Funny post by Dooce on same topic, 3/12:
http://www.dooce.com/2010/03/10/next-blood-thirsty-bunnies
The same goes for when you work night shift and the neighbor wants to mow the lawn…just as you have pulled the curtains and drifted off to the soothing sounds of the New Age satellite music channel. Or when the lazy county workers suddenly decide they must scurry to the rock pile across from your house and cram their week’s worth of beeping trucks and smashing doors and rolling gravel into the hour in which you are finally hitting REM…which freaks out the horse and sends him pounding by your window a few times. How about the Saturday morning you get to sleep in and some phone salesman calls…seriously…on SATURDAY MORNING BEFORE 9:00??? My blood is boiling with all these negative thoughts, so I’ll stop before is gets out of control.