Not My First Baby Rodeo

Pic­ture Cour­tesy: Time, Inc.

I have not slept for more than 3 hours at a time in the month.  It wouldn’t be so bad except my son, my beau­ti­ful 5 month old son, taunted me prior to this time by sleep­ing through the night.   A feat I’d only heard of in hushed whis­pers and leg­ends that get tossed around mommy & me classes.

“The Baby Who Slept By 8 Weeks Old Through The Night (or at least so you could get 6 hours of sleep)”.  I couldn’t have hoped that it would be me.  It’s. Never. Been. Me. Always took longer to get a baby sleep­ing for 6 hours or more in my house.  Then when they finally did, I’d wake up look at the clock & assume some­thing hor­ri­ble had hap­pened.  Because there is NO way that the kid slept that long.  I know that it’s a long road some­times to reach sleep.  How­ever, he gave hope to me so early on.

BUT dur­ing the time he was actu­ally sleep­ing through the night, I couldn’t sleep. NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRIED. I was stuck with PPD induced insom­nia, feel­ing desparately tired only to have my head hit the pil­lows & be unable to sleep.  I would just lay there in bed.  STARING AT THE CEILING FOR HOURS.  I wanted to sleep so badly, but couldn’t.

Now I can sleep.  And I had a small taste of glo­ri­ous sleep (thank you won­der­ful doc­tor) for a few days while my beau­ti­ful baby boy slept.  It was truly sweet glo­ri­ous sleep.  The kind were you drift off to choirs of angels singing you lul­la­bies.  There are angels with harps on clouds fluff­ing your pil­low and tuck­ing you in. It was a heav­enly experience.

Then some­thing hap­pened.  My son turned on me. He took my angels away.  He has since joined what can only be a secret gov­ern­ment group as an under­cover oper­a­tive using enhanced sleep depri­va­tion tech­niques to tor­ture me.  There is NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION. Trust me, I already thought about it all.  Growth spurt-nope.  Teething-nope.  Wants to party from 2–4 am being held & walked while we give him praise for his immense cuteness–check.  From my keen skills of logic secret oper­a­tive is the only thing that makes sense.

Last night was no dif­fer­ent.  He was all nice.  Snug as a bug in a rug.  Around 2am he began to stir.  He gig­gled, played, and we tried to just let him drift back off.  BUT OH NO, he wasn’t buyin’ what we were sellin’.  Instead he was up and gave us a good talk­ing to about how dare we let his majesty attempt to slip off to sleep with­out a full audi­ence.  DON’T WE KNOW WHO HE IS?  In all hon­estly I felt like say­ing “I DON’T EFFIN CARE WHO YOU ARE KID, I NEED SLEEP!!!”  But because I am a good mom, I just thought it.

And I got up to help Hubby with D-man. There D-man was flipped over on his back in his crib (which is in our room by the way, so there’s no shut­ting the door & hop­ing he doesn’t know we are really there). He looked all cute.  Like a tur­tle who couldn’t flip back over.  All arms & legs going with a lit­tle look like “Hey, I’m so cute.  Love me.”  Which of course is like mommy kryp­tonite & I crum­bled.  Damn babies, they always shine their lit­tle rain­bow laced cute­ness at you suck­ing, you back in.

After rock­ing, walk­ing, nurs­ing, more rock­ing, let­ting him play in between us with his toes, a lit­tle more walk­ing, and another nurs­ing ses­sion he was asleep (we’d have just kept him w/ us in bed but lately he is a mover & shaker).  AT FOUR AM, 2 hours after wak­ing.  And since he didn’t fall asleep from his first wak­ing at 11pm (went to sleep around 8pm) until Mid­night that means I only got 2 hours of sleep before that lit­tle night time party.  At 6 this morn­ing I wasn’t super excited to get up again either.  Have I told you yet that he was sleep­ing through the night, that I can NOW sleep, & yet he is totally tor­tur­ing me at night with his cute­ness & lack of sleep?

AND before any­one sends me books, tips, or dia­grams on how to get a baby to sleep.  Let me remind you this isn’t my first rodeo.  I’ve done this before, log­i­cally I know he WILL sleep again.  I’m a baby rodeo champ. It’s a phase like the time I thought a perm would look good on me or the time my Dad did (it was the 80s, stop your judg­ing).  My perm went away as did my Dad’s & I am sure this will too.  Until then I have my mem­o­ries of those few days of glo­ri­ous sleep.  Now if only I could the angels to help with this baby.

Tagged as: angels singing me lullabies, baby, sleep