Daysleeper

Sam is a wonderful napper. Um, during the day, that is. She’s actually not sure what the difference between night and day IS, so every evening/morning/ha ha WHATEVER between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. (the timing, it is marvelously unpredictable!), there is The Screaming. The Screaming FROM HELL. The painful, bloody murder screaming that implies that I’m ripping her toes off and stuffing them in her mouth. (Wait, you’re not supposed to do that to babies?) (I KID OMG.)

The first few times were hellish. I mean, TRULY HELLISH. She screamed, I cried, Adam Googled, we all lost our collective shit. It’s gotten a little easier because I know it’s all temporary — eventually, she stops screaming and just passes right the hell out in my arms, so exhausted from whatever leg-wriggling pain, real or imagined, she was in. It eventually stops. Mercifully, it EVENTUALLY STOPS.

I’m not sure it’s anything beyond the normal witching hour stuff, just at a most inconvenient time of day, because 90% of the time, she’s the happiest baby ever, and sleeps like a true champion (you know, in two-hour chunks, not through the night or anything), provided she’s properly swaddled. (ALL HAIL THE SWADDLE ME) (TM)

Anyway! A word about sleep deprivation and the childless.I don’t know why I feel a responsibility to debunk all the asshole things parents said to me before I had a kid, and to give people who don’t have kids a little respect, but I do. So! To the “Sleep now…” or “You think you’re tired NOW!” people: Let me say that although I am getting less sleep than I’ve ever gotten in my entire life, I am not nearly as tired as I was after a night of no sleep Before Sam. I don’t know what kicks in — adrenaline, love, whatever — but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, even on the nights when she doesn’t sleep AT ALL.

I don’t think you can compare the two experiences, because one includes the enormity of a COLOSSAL RESPONSIBILITY OF A TINY PERSON and you know, the need to KEEP ANOTHER PERSON ALIVE, whereas the other is just incredibly fucking annoying, and you are cut no breaks whatsoever, because you don’t have any responsibilities, you sad, childless, lazy sow! How DARE you require eight hours of sleep!

And so, to the sleepless childless people out there: you probably are more tired than me, in a weird way. It’s all relative.

Not that I’m not really fucking tired. Because OH I AM. I’m literally weeping by the time 4 p.m. rolls around every afternoon, and my evenings are filled with a special kind of dread. Sadly, the person who is suffering from my exhaustion is Adam, not Sam. I have no patience for him, and he hasn’t even done anything wrong — in fact, he’s done everything he can to make this easier on me and then some. I think that’s the biggest challenge — remembering that I’m also married to someone, not just a mom, and treating him as a person who also deserves attention and nice words, especially since he can actually understand what I’m saying, unlike the pants pooper among us. Not that she’s not worthy, of course, because she is.

Finally, I will leave you with the most ridiculous thing I have done to date, and I … oh God, whatever. So Sam was laid up with her first head cold last week, and I’m sorry, there is NOTHING more pitiful than the sound of a newborn snorfling and snuffling because girlfriend can’t breathe. It’s awful. Awful.

Of course, she’s way too little to dose up with Sudafed and sack out for the night (DARE TO DREAM), so we were pretty much stuck with homeopathic remedies, including hot steamy showers, humidifiers and irrigating her nostrils with saline and the snot sucker. Except that Adam performed some constructive Googling and determined that breastmilk in the nostril was helpful (?!) and … well, you see where this is going. Desperation led me to the most ridiculous position of my life, wherein I hovered over my daughter, boob in hand and I tried to actually shoot breastmilk up my child’s nostrils.

I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Happy day! Or night! WHATEVER! HA HA HA.

I promise one day I’ll stop talking about the baby all the time. I PROMISE. Please bear with me.

*REM

50 comments March 31st, 2009