This past Friday night I walked into our bedroom, clad in only a tank top and tiny shorts, slowly approached Mike…and nearly burst into tears. Drew had woken up half an hour prior, and despite our best attempts to gently soothe him and then rush out of his room in the hopes he’d fall back asleep, he wasn’t having it. He wanted to eat. He had gone to bed barely four hours before, and he was up again. And since it was only 11PM, I was certain he’d be up at least once more at some point in the middle of the night for another feeding.
Until this point, our evening had been going fantastically. We were both happy that the weekend was upon us. We had relaxed on the couch with some wine, watched a great movie, and were enjoying our “us” time. Drew promptly put an end to where else those good vibes may have led us. I crawled into bed and promptly started whining and complaining about how often he’d been waking up these days, all full of woe is me’s and I cant take it anymore’s. I talked about all those ‘other’ babies out there who were sleeping through the night, declared that he was too old to need two nighttime feedings. “I just want six straight hours of sleep. I haven’t had that in six months,” I whined. “Six months!”
My complaints quickly spiraled into a disagreement between Mike and I, bickering about the same things that all sleep-deprived new parents bicker over, a vicious cycle of who has it worse, where we forget that we are team that must get through this together but turn on each other in a blame game that nobody wins. We fell asleep facing away from each other, frustrated and bitter, sheets pulled tightly over our respective shoulders. We woke up six hours later. That’s right, after that 11PM wake up that sent me over the edge, Drew slept through the night. The irony of his timing was not lost on us.
“You said you wanted a night,” Mike said the next day. “You got it, six hours.” Of course, my internal reaction was to promptly think, ‘Is that all I get? One night? Don’t I deserve more?’ That’s the thing with babies and sleep. You get one good night and rather than appreciate it, you desperately hope that you’ll get another. You spend the daytime hours worrying about what lies ahead, you go to bed twitchy and nervous, unable to fall calmly into sleep because you’re worried about the alarm that will sound at some random, awful hour. Going to sleep becomes like playing musical chairs. Will this be the night the music stops and I fall to the floor in a sad, frazzled, sleepless heap?
And then, the superstition. You think baseball players are superstitious? I think new parents are worse. Following a good night’s sleep, you recount everything you did the previous day, wondering what contributed to that glorious gift from God of six-plus uninterrupted hours. Spent time outside? Baby had two good naps? Evening cereal? Bedtime bath? The formula will be replicated EXACTLY the following night. Even if the last thing on Earth I want to do at the end of a long day is arch my aching back over that plastic whale tub, you better believe I’m going to do it again if I think there’s a chance it will mean one less nighttime wakeup.
Since that night, Drew has had consistent stretches of six to eight hours of sleep. It’s only been four days though, so I’m not yet ready to believe it’s here to stay. I’m still going to bed with my fingers and toes crossed, self-piteously saying to Mike, “see you in an hour” when I flip off the light. I’m convinced that my typing this has probably ruined the whole thing. I would delete this whole post right now, but if one other parent reads this and finds some comfort that they’re not the only one, I figure that’s worth giving up some sleep. Not much, though; just a little. I’m tired.
