There's nothing quite like the feeling of having an infant in the house - especially if it's YOUR infant. After months of what you thought were sleepless nights due to your massive belly (or your massive wife) impeding on a comfortable night's sleep, you bring this bowling ball home, and realize what it truly means to have sleepless nights.
About 2 months into this experience is when it starts to hit you. It kind of seeps in before you realize it, but one day, you are standing in your kitchen (or living room, or bathroom or whatever) and you realize that you are standing perfectly still, but it feels like you're moving. Or maybe that your skin is still moving. Neurons are firing into space. You are officially sleep deprived. If you sit in one spot for more than 22 seconds, you fall asleep. Little micro-sleeps until you're up and moving again. It's a dangerous way to live. Cortisol and adrenaline and all things bad for you on a systemic basis are what make up the majority of your blood volume. Your child is killing you.
It gets better (really, it does). For instance, there's a point in time when your infant sleeps through the night (and by "sleep through the night" I mean, a solid 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep for you), at which time you totally freak out, thinking that maybe your baby died in the middle of the night. He didn't, but your stress hormones just spiked again. Nice work. After a few nights in a row of this, it becomes the new normal.
A little while later, you kind of forget what it was like those first few months. That's where we are, now. The boy's 2. The girl's 7 (and who am I kidding, she was always a good sleeper). The one who's potty trained is self-sufficient, the one who's not has a diaper on, anyway. There's no reason to not get a good night's sleep. And for the most part, we have been getting fairly good sleep for the past 6 months or so.
And that's why stuff like this past week is so terrible. The boy's sick with a cough. The kind of cough that wakes you out of a deep sleep and makes you talk in hushed tones to your spouse about what to do. The kind of cough that leads to sleepless nights for all involved. I'm a firm believer that after you have kids, your sleep is never quite the same. Even when they regularly sleep through the night, it takes years to (or maybe you never do) get back to where you used to be, sleep-wise. And once you do, you're old. Like...4 years older than you were when the kid was born, and it feels like you're 10 years older. You've aged.
It might be why non-parents have a hard time relating to parents and vice-versa. We are on completely different wavelengths. Our body chemistry is completely different, now. I've got adrenaline, coritsol and caffiene coursing through my veins. You've got DHEA and HDL and hemoglobin. It's like I'm a monster zombie. Please don't shoot. I want to be like you again. Help me...
I like this post! Well said my friend. As a single person w/o kids, I totes can't relate. Any sleep deprivation on my side is completely self inflicted, and often alocohol related. I sleep until noon on a Saturday and think nothing of it. In fact, it's an expectation on my part, and I try not to schedule anything before noon unless it can't be helped. It's a life of luxury that's for sure. Today I was irritable when I had to wake up at 9:20 to get to work by 10am on a Sunday. Thanks for helping me keep it in perspective!
ReplyDeleteI only wrote that as my long-winded excuse for skipping the cardio on both Thursday AND Friday. Bubba had a bad cough, which kept the whole family up all night last week. Hopefully, we've turned a corner on this thing, and we can go back to "sleeping" normally, again.
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