The doctors — my doctor, her doctor — warned that if she didn’t learn to sleep on her own, she’d have lifelong problems: anxiety, depression, reduced executive function. (She would be like me, I thought to myself.)

Indeed, we had tried cry-it-out sleep training — successfully — when she was 5 months old, but at this point we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it again. We took her to a behavioral specialist. They said make a chart, with what needs doing before bed. Say nighttime is only for sleeping, not for tantrums or waking Mama.

And: Lock her in her room.

Maybe if I didn’t live in the over-parenting capital of Brooklyn, surrounded by families that seemed so competent and secure, I wouldn’t have minded. When I went to bed at night, there were my girls, nestled on the futon next to my bed, twins in organic cotton utero. They filled me with gratitude, almost an ache of it. Maybe this was what was right for our family, but with all the noise from the other families and doctors, I couldn’t tell.

Finally, in February of last year, we bought them a bunk bed, as a bribe. They could have videos and sugar — they could have anything, really — if they would stay in it.

They did. Bedtime was still a nightmare, but my older daughter stayed in her room until morning. She slept. I slept. Everyone in the house slept, for five months. It was a beautiful thing. And then it stopped.

She appears at the side of the bed, a living ghost, clutching her monkey lovey and staring with a haunted look on her face. She is 6, a month away from 7. For a week she has been waking up at the end of every sleep cycle. Forty-five minutes. Sometimes an hour.

At first I was confused. What are you doing up? Go back to bed.

Then annoyed. There is no waking Mama up at night.