You Will Never Sleep Again
We hear rumors before the baby arrives about the impact of sleep deprivation, but no one can prepare us for this kind of pain and suffering. As Gordon put it, "In many countries, sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture." Continuous sleep deprivation can make the most sane, level-headed -people irritable, irrational, or just plain crazy. We all turn into zombies. It is a cruel irony that we are expected to deal with one of the most difficult challenges of our lives on a wing and a prayer and a thirty-minute nap. Couldn't Mother Nature have arranged things a little bit better?
"I was so tired I actually tried to breastfeed Bob’s arm one night."
—Louise, married 4 years, 1 kid (FYI: Bob is her husband, not her baby.)
I have a new game that I play called "Mirrors." It's when Rachel and I go shopping (after changing, prepping bags, cleaning up, changing out of milk-soaked clothes, loading the car, and finally being ready to get out of the house), I'll walk passed the first mirror I see and wonder who in the hell beat me up. Seriously, even Peter McNeeley walked away from Mike Tyson with lighter black eyes than this. I remember back to college all-nighters (errr....studying) and I never looked this bad. What the heck is going on with the bags and the circles, the five-o'clock shadows,and the GUT!?!? Don't even get me started with the gut. Rachel has the baby and somehow I'm the one that retains the baby weight. Sheesh.
In all honesty, we've been sleeping rather well lately. Tenzin has been on a pretty straightforward schedule, nodding off around 9:00 pm (right after his evening nap) and staying out throughout most of the night. He only wakes up intermittently for a diaper blowout or a hunger pain. So what the heck is going on? Why do I always feel like I'm 6 hours short of a good night's rest? Please tell me it gets better.
Another fun game is countdown-till-we-get-our-butts-out-to-California. We'll be out there at the end of February and I'm hoping this will do the trick. I can't wait to just get away from work for a while. I have so much planned, but keep in mind that these plans are a little different from my former California vacation plans.
1. Sleep on beach. Try also sleeping to and from beach.
2. Sleep on lawn chair. Just dose off at any given time for no good reason other than the fact that I can.
3. Sleep with window open. It's snowy and 20-something degrees today. I'm ready for this one.
4. Go back to beach and sleep some more.
5. Go for walk in shorts. Come back and rest by sleeping.
6. Kick Ashley's butt in surfing competition. (CLICK HERE) Sleep after rubbing in my badassedness.
So as you can see, my priorities have changed quite a bit.
In other news, I went through the Koday Gallery online and cracked up at some of the newborn pictures of Tenzin. Everybody always tells us how much he's changed, but we're around him so much that I can't really see it. It's amazing to look at some of those hospital pictures back then and compare them to recent shots. He was SO SMALL!!! It's comforting to see him getting so big. An easy way to realize you have a healthy and happy baby. There's also a side of me that doesn't want him to grow up. I see some of the "complicated" children at the stores, throwing tantrums and stomping their feet, and it's almost comforting see my little boy snoozing in the front of the cart - no idea what the candy machines are for, no idea who Elmo is, no idea what new pair of Nikes are "hot right now." I'm so frightened as to what we'll be confronted with as parents, especially with computers and the internet. There's a whole new realm of cyber-parenting to freak parents out.
All in all, I'm just feeling a little lost. Not a bad kind of lost, but overwhelmed with thoughts of the future. Maybe that's why I need so much sleep....it's God's way of telling me to relax and get some Zzzzz's (for His sake), because there's obviously no point to stressing over this now.
It's funny because dad always told me that he, "hoped I would have children just like me when I grow up." By that count, Tenzin's got another four years before he jumps out of an oak tree with a garbage bag as a parachute. I guess that'll be the time to REALLY worry, unless he tries it again with umbrella. Then I'll know he's just like me.
1 comment:
It gets easier! It gets easier! There is a price, though ... the more you sleep at night, the more likely he will be running around during the day. It's an interesting trade-off.
Post a Comment