sleep is for sissy's

So as everyone knows, babies keep people up nights and they keep them extremely busy throughout the day as well. We lucked out with our baby, he's always been a "good" sleeper. This means that from day one he tended to sleep 4 ~5 hour stretches overnight. This sounds pretty good if you just focus on the 4 ~ 5 hours of sleep part of the statement. But once you dig a little deeper you'll see why we all still qualified as 'sleep deprived' during this phase.


First of all, a newborn (in our home) doesn't sleep in his own room or even his own bed, he shares a bed with us. Nestled safely between us in a small little nook. We hear every breath, every whimper, every sigh, every rumble of his belly. And we love it. We lay awake just to listen to the music of his body. We drift off to a light slumber and wake up an hour and a half later to a crying baby. We pat his back, we roll him over (yes, we allowed our baby to sleep on his side, and even his stomach), and he drifts back to sleep. An hour later and he's up again, this time for real and I'm nursing him while Jeff is bringing me food to stave off my ravenous appetite (does my body realize it's not pregnant any more?). We change the 13th diaper of the last 24 hours and we're all snuggled back in bed within an hour, drifting back to sleep for perhaps another three hours, maybe four. I, as a nursing mother, wake up soaked in milk two hours before the rest of the crew is awake. I get up, I get towels to sleep on top of, I change my shirt, I pump, I get back in bed and before I know it, we're all awake again to begin the routine once more.

Time passes, the baby grows and he moves into his own room down the hall. Now we sleep with a monitor on, straining our ears for any sign of a problem, and thankfully all we hear are the occasional snores of a congested baby. We're getting 8~10 hours of sleep a night, and its a beautiful thing. Some nights we don't even have to wake up to feed him. On those nights I wake up with aching breasts so large that even Anna Nicole Smith would be jealous. I drag my butt out of bed and to pump. To pass the time I read, I eat, I play sudoku at 3am while my family sleeps. I envy them. I'm back in bed by quarter to 4, asleep by 5:30 (because now for some reason despite my exhaustion, I cannot just fall asleep) and we're all up at 6:15 ready to start the day.

Time marches further on and the baby sleeps 10 hours a night, every night. My breasts have realized their job is nearly done and they allow me to sleep as well. We can go to bed at 8pm if we want to, and we know we'll sleep uninterrupted until at least 4am, sometimes 6am. Now this is a beautiful thing! When the baby does wake up we've got the routine down to a science. I lay in bed, Jeff brings the baby to me, I nurse him laying down, we all fall back asleep and I eventually realize the baby wants his bed and so I deposit him there and return to my own for another hour or two of sleep. It totally works. The daytime exhaustion has become second nature.  I can no longer remember a time when I wasn't tired so it's not even worth mentioning anymore.

This is life. Wake up with the sun (or in our case, wake up with the son), change, feed and play with him. Change & feed ourselves. Feed him again, put him down for a quick nap. He wakes up, comfort him, play with him, change him. Feed him. Play with him. Change him. Put him down for a longer nap. Feed yourself. He wakes up, comfort him, play with him. Take the dog for a walk. Feed the baby, play with the baby. Feed yourself. Change the baby, feed the baby, put him to bed. Finish feeding yourself, brush your teeth and off to bed. Life is busy, life is routine, life is the same for so many of us with babies and yet, it's anything but ordinary. Life is truly extraordinary with a baby, and sleep, well sleep is overrated.