Like many young mothers, I was always exhausted during the period when the baby awoke many times during the night. I dutifully climbed out of my warm bed to tend to the wee creature and offer nourishment, if this was needed, and comfort. Sometimes it took just minutes to settle the baby back down. At other times, I had to grind my way through a number of those less-than-entertaining, late-night, early-morning infomercials before I could return my sleeping babe to the crib. I would then creep back into my now-cold bed next to my snoring husband and attempt to get some sleep before the next cry came from the nursery.

Night Patrol

Getting up with the baby was “my” duty. I had been indoctrinated with this belief by generation after generation of women who reasoned that the man, the daddy, needed his sleep “because he worked.” Like women didn’t work, too! Even 20-some years ago, when my children were babies, women held full-time jobs. It wasn’t fair that, for the most part, getting up at night was a mother’s responsibility. Although I didn’t work outside the home, I did work inside. I was a stay-at-home mother and a part-time writer. I had one-and-a-half jobs compared to my husband’s one!

My babies were breast-fed for the first six months, which excused my husband from this in-the-middle-of-the-night task. At about the same time my boobs became my own again, my babies began to mumble the word that mothers cherish. They started to honor me with the title of “mama.” Forget this, I thought. My goal was to get them to say “dada” first. Whenever their lips began to form the “mmmm” sound, I excitedly said “dada” over and over again. If dada was present, I associated the name with the person. If he wasn’t, I used a photo of him. “Dada” became each of my babies’ first word. I was now prepared for some good all-night sleep.

And my plan worked. If the baby awoke in the middle of the night, his or her cry would be accompanied by a string of “dada’s.” With a sleepy smile, I would awake my husband and tell him that the baby was calling for him. He would get up and take care of the baby’s needs, be it a bottle or the comfort of a hold. My husband never complained; he was thrilled at being singled out. He loved that all of his babies said “dada” first!

Don't learn this one the hard way! As much as I wanted to be the center of my babies' world, my well-being, and therefore my family’s happiness, required that dada take center stage early in my children’s lives.