Okay, yes, I know. Sleep technically has 5 letters in it: S-L-E-E-P. BUT, in our house for a very, very long time, the word sleep would almost always elicit the same reaction as another 4-letter word that began with "S". Or, for that matter, a 4-letter word that began with "F" or "D". It was no longer synonymous with the "L" word - "love" or "like" or "lust" (though we certainly did lust after it for a while). Oh, don't get me wrong, we LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE sleep. It's just that, it's really hard to come by and wasn't something that happened for long stretches of time. And, quite frankly, those people in our lives (which are pretty much everyone else who doesn't have an infant) who looked well-rested. Welll...I'm not going to lie, there are moments when I wanted to smack you upside the head or sneak up to your house in the middle of the night and start a car alarm. I mean, seriously? How dare you walk around without perpetual bags under your eyes! Sheesh. ;-) We looked like zombies for many, many weeks and I'm pretty sure there are days that I still do. Everyone around me must be the nicest people in the world to not point that out. Thank you. I love you for that. :-)
Here is Andy looking like a zombie just a few days after we brought David home. There are no pictures of me looking like this because, well, it would probably scare you all enough that you would never have kids or would hide in your closet. Or, you would probably consume entire bottles of alcohol in a drunken attempt to forget the entire image was ever imprinted on your mind.
The lack of sleep was a HUGE eye-opener. Yes, yes, yes, I know all you people told me that the horrible sleep I got in the last weeks of pregnancy was just to prepare me for having a newborn. Well, here's the thing - it didn't. I felt like crap during those weeks for a variety of reasons and the lack of sleep didn't help. And, my sleep was probably more interrupted during that time than it was when we first brought David home. However, after a few weeks with a newborn, I realized that I actually felt rested in final stage of pregnancy. There is nothing - NOTHING - out there that can prepare you for the complete upheaval of your sleep. Even though, as I learned, newborns sleep A LOT those first few weeks, it is not peaceful. David was (still can be) a noisy little sleeper. The squeaks, the grunts, the growls, the groans, the whimpers...holy cow! Whoever said "sleeping like a baby" obviously was NOT talking about a newborn! If you didn't know those were normal (and what first time parents do?), they would keep you awake constantly. Couple that with the fear of SIDS or the roof caving in on your baby or a blanket leaping across the room to land on their heads...well, sleep was NOT peaceful or restful.
Also, I cannot tell you how many people constantly asked me, "Is he sleeping through the night yet?" I mean, this started when he was around 2 weeks old! Just a tip for all of you out there, this is not a good question to ask any parent of an infant. The answer is most likely no and even though it is asked with love and in all innocence, the resulting effect on the parents is a sense of, "Oh my god, what is WRONG with our baby? We must be failing in some way because he is not sleeping through the night!" Well, just an FYI, I learned from all my late night research, that most babies don't "sleep through the night" until around 3 months. Some lucky parents have babies sleeping through the night around 8 weeks or even earlier, but those parents kissed a unicorn or something while pregnant, so they don't count. :-)
I'm not going to lie. Those first few weeks were HARD and not just because of the lack of sleep, though that was certainly the biggest transition. I would find myself up in the middle of the night, nursing David and Googling "when do babies sleep through the night." The results were depressing, to say the least. Plus, right around 4 weeks, our cute little guy had transformed into the fussiest, crankiest baby in this house. Hooo-boy! One night, after I told Andy that he HAD to leave work EXACTLY at 5 (and not one second later, because let me tell you, I would know) to come and relieve one exhausted mommy from a baby who'd been crying all day and hadn't really slept at all, I embarked on another Google search. This time, though, it was about whether or not I was keeping David up too long. The results were both depressing (because it ended up making me feel like a really bad mommy) and life changing. The answer to the question was a resounding yes, I WAS keeping him up too long. Once I realized this and started to put David down to sleep when he showed sleepy cues (and yes, I did Google what those cues would be - one has a lot of time on their hands in the middle of the night when no one is on Facebook and you are up rocking a baby to sleep), our little man became less cranky. We had yet to see any real change in his nighttime sleeping, but desperately clung to the hope that it would happen and also to the statement that "sleep begets sleep." So, my quest to teach him how to nap began. Sometimes those naps would happen in his crib (rarely until he was closer to 10 weeks old)), many times those naps would happen in our arms and on a few memorable occasions, those naps would happen while I desperately drove around in the car for at least an hour. Most often, though, he would take naps in his swing (oh, how I love the person who invented the infant swing!)
Less than 2 weeks old.
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Not really sure how old, but isn't he cute?
Less than 2 weeks in both of these...
Love, love, love.
While David is not sleeping through the night, yet, and has days where he takes many, many 30 minute naps, he is doing so much better and we are looking less and less like zombies. He has more nights now in which he sleeps from 8-3 and has just recently started sleeping from the moment we lay him back down after feeding him until 7 or 8. It has been amazing! Who knew how much a 4-5 hour stretch of sleep would make you feel almost human again? Plus, we have been laying him down awake for about 2 weeks now and he is definitely learning how to put himself to sleep - a HUGE success!
Just a fair warning, though, the phrase "I'm so tired" is pretty much guaranteed to get you, at the very least a frown, but more likely a dunking in any nearby toilet. :-)
