Right, does anyone else bum-slap their baby to sleep? In this house we have moved pretty neatly from a bed-time boob dependency to a bum-slap dependency and I just don’t know how it happened. And before you all send round Social Services, by slap I of course mean pat. PAT. P.A.T.
Oi Poppins, it's late and words fail me
We call it the Nanny McThurerford Bum-slap after the work of a very gorgeous and reassuringly expensive (worth every bloody penny) London nanny friend of mine. It would seem that a vigorous pat on the bum can restore your baby’s factory settings. But don’t stop. DON’T STOP. Don’t whatever you do stop and try to creep out of the room because guess what? Your trainers squeak and your jeans rustle. I mean mine do of course.
Eat your heart out Gina Ford and all your Contented Little Babies.
I have removed the breast but not hand. Seriously, I am still working on a no-cry sleep solution which involves removing myself from the bedroom by a new millimeter each night. And god bless Bibsey, but she is not one of life’s self-soothers. I know, she needs to learn it. And by doing such dreadful things as feeding her to sleep, rocking her to sleep and patting her to sleep I have stood in the way of this learning and have probably ruined her life.
How do they sleep like that?
Ok, time to stop hitting myself over the head and get back on brief. Bum slapping. Sometimes when I am leaning over the cot tapping her little bum (often in time to a tune in my head – currently Duérmete Mi Niña that old Bolivian classic from Canciones de la Cuna) I lose all sense of where I am and what I am doing. (Funnily enough I have used similar words to describe how I felt when I was in labour.) I find myself drifting off (in the case of childbirth it was not so much drifting as… words fail me) and then back again to realise the absurdity of what I am actually doing: bending over my child’s cot in the near dark repeatedly patting her bottom to the point where my arm is aching and my hand is a little numb and buzzy. If I try to move away too early she waggles her bum impatiently as if to say “you ain’t finished here missus”.
I am sure that it goes without saying that this is not how Nanny McThurerford prescribed the use of the Bum-slap – she would be disapproving of all this Bibsey bedtime tyranny I am sure.
Is my child going to hate me one day for writing all this rubbish on the internet? Probably. *Puts thought to back of mind*
So, any takers? Does anyone else bum-slap their baby to sleep? If not, why not? And what other bizarre methods are you employing? Gina Ford need not apply.
