The Snuggle Trap

Holding tight to the last days of babyhood

Photo by Marie Despeyroux on Unsplash

“Wanna snuggle?”

The voice pipes up from the darkness of the bedroom, where I can see the glow of my son’s pacifier hovering above the floor. I hoist him onto the twin bed we use for such occasions.

Immediately, he tucks his head down in the “turtle,” his preferred sleeping position. I smell his breath, still sweet despite the sausages and pistachios he loves to eat. He reaches over to twirl my hair.

“Remember when Charlotte pushed the swing and Ms. Margot’s phone was in it?” he asks.

“Mmm,” I answer, although I have no idea what he’s talking about.

This is is his way of telling me about his day—a toddler version of pillow talk. His big brown eyes examine my face intently, wondering why my glasses are missing. “It’s almost time for night-night,” I warn.

Months ago, I never would have allowed for such procrastination at nap time. He’s almost 3, and I’ve been militant about sleep training since he was 9 months old. But these days I’m a little softer. I can tell his days in the crib are numbered, and it feels like his babyhood is waning, too.

Last month when he went back to preschool, he kept getting sick—first with a stomach bug that made him vomit at 4 a.m., then with hand, foot, and mouth disease, which created painful sores on his tongue. We started snuggling to comfort him during those late-night wakings, and the habit stuck.

I know it’s a slippery slope. One day he will refuse to sleep without an adult beside him and the whole enterprise will fall apart. But not today.

“One more minute,” he says.

My head drops back to the pillow. The urge to sleep is so strong, I have to remind myself that he will dismantle the window shade if I don’t deposit him in his crib soon.

Lying here, doing nothing, is a luxury I never thought I’d have. Two years ago, I remember asking a therapist why new motherhood was so hard, why I had to suffer through birth trauma and marital conflict along with sleeplessness and nursing pain. Did it have to be this tough? I wondered. She didn’t have an answer, but she did know the hard moments would make the good ones even sweeter.

Sometime after my son turned 18 months old, I understood what she meant. He stopped nursing and began to sleep through the night. I got real rest and reclaimed parts of my life I thought I had lost: my career, exercise, social outings after 6 p.m. He began running and climbing; his vocabulary exploded. Suddenly he was a small person I enjoyed hanging out with, instead of a baby who relied on my body to survive.

Now our days our filled with tantrums, power struggles over diaper changes and getting dressed for school. This stage is exhausting in a whole new way. But my little boy is so inquisitive and funny, so unabashed in his adoration, that I am often amazed by him. (Recently, he offered to pay his teacher for a popsicle). He’s a miracle I never imagined, and I will hold him close for as long as possible.