My Date with Dr. Ferber
An excerpt from "Afterbirth."
by Caroline Bicks
June 24, 2009
Don’t get me wrong. There was a part of me that was hoping it would work. But I liked this story a lot and kept adding onto it as the months went by. It kept me warm and safe through that frigid winter.
But then things, as they always do, started to change: Winter turned to Spring; I didn’t need my Brest Friend anymore; my baby son inexplicably, accidentally really, started sleeping through the night. Even my daughter started waking up just once instead
of twice or three times. Sometimes.
In June, I got a call from Dr. Ferber’s receptionist to confirm my appointment. And you know what? I didn’t think twice before telling her I didn’t need it anymore. When I hung up the phone, it took me a few moments to realize the hugeness of what had just
happened: I had actually broken up with the man of my dreams.
I walked away from my Ferber fantasy.My daughter’s eight now. She’s a great kid, but she still wakes up at least once a night usually and calls out for a snuggle or a blanket, or just because she can. We have, according to the books, utterly failed. But when I walked away from my Ferber fantasy,
I also walked away from what those books represent: the idea that every child can and must be shaped into the same perfect being, and our need to get the gold star for doing it perfectly and by the book.
Now, instead of lying about how well my family sleeps, I tell people that I cancelled on Dr. Ferber. And I feel kind of proud about it. Because when I did it, I owned what every parent knows but few of us publicly admit: that this is a sloppy job, and no
amount of Lysol can wipe out all the messy, petrifying imperfections it brings out.
Even if the real reason was that I was just too tired to go.
Excerpted from Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine, edited by Dani Klein
Modisett.
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
 |
Caroline Bicks is an English professor at Boston College. Her work has been heard on NPR and seen at ImprovBoston, and she performs regularly
in "Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine." If you
think birth is tough now, check out her book Midwiving Subjects in
Shakespeare's England.
|
|
|
-
by Tamara Berger
Night after night, I listened to my son wail and the Sleep Lady scold me.
-
by Melissa Rayworth
The unhappy results of the war on sleep-training.
-
by Jennifer V. Hughes
Sleep expert Elizabeth Pantley breaks down her method.
|
