On Sleep, or the Absence Thereof

Babygirl woke up not quite crying at 2am last night (this morning?).  She is nearly five months old and rarely wakes up in the night anymore, so we are always sort of indecisive on how to deal with it.  (I should mention at this point that we are CIO people.  It works for us.  But it’s not everyone’s thing.  I get it.)  So last night we lay in bed and listened to the crackle of the baby monitor as she rolled around in her crib and debated just how badly she wanted us.

You parents know the sound: whimper whimper…pause…whimper CRY!  whimper…pause…CRY!…CRY!…whimper…silence.  And the whole time — which is, like, 2 minutes, but feels like an hour — you’re lying there with your partner, as wide awake as can be, whispering: “What do you think?  Should we go in?  I mean, at some point we have to stop running in there every time she sneezes, right?  Is it too soon?  But what if she wakes her brother?  She can’t possibly be hungry, right?  I don’t know!  It’s the middle of the night!  I can’t make a decision right now!  Is she quiet?  I think she’s quiet.  Okay.  Okay.  Go back to sleep.”  But the sleep is fragmented, light, and after a safe amount of time has passed you get up and go into the room, and put a hand on both the babies’ backs, just to be sure they’re breathing, they’re asleep, they’re okay.

Sleep is a funny thing.  You think you need it.  And then you have a new baby and suddenly you realize you can totally function without it.  You can make lunches for your preschooler, you can carry on a conversation with your pediatrician, you can exercise, you can go to work and maybe even make it through the day without crying.  You can drive — although whether or not you should is an entirely different question; I will confess that the moment I realized how deeply exhausted I was following Babygirl’s birth I was behind the wheel of the car with my most precious cargo in the backseat.  Look alive, Jaime, and get the heck home, NOW.


People talk about how you should sleep when the baby sleeps.  Oh, okay.  It is my opinion that those people have a staff.  Because what I need to do when the baby sleeps is wash the bottle and pump parts, empty/load the dishwasher, fold the 30 tons of laundry from the past ten days, prepare dinner for Babyman, make a grocery list, squeeze in some time on email, conference call with my office, try to get caught up on the latest episode of Revenge, and do a 20-minute Jillian Michaels workout on OnDemand.  I might be half-conscious from exhaustion, but this is the only time I have to myself anymore and gosh-darn-it-I’m-going-to-make-the-most-of-it.

When I was only sleeping two or three hours at a stretch, and even those were interrupted and tense, half-listening for Babygirl, I just gave up on sleep.  Who needs it?  I would bound out of bed at the slightest change in Babygirl’s breathing rhythm.  If she woke up at 4:30am, GREAT!  That meant I could feed her until 5 and have a full hour to myself before Babyman woke up.  Bring on the decaf!  (Helluva placebo effect there).

But lately, Babygirl has been sleeping really well.  Like through-the-night well.  And I have discovered that sleep is biological crack cocaine.  The more you have it, the more you need it.  When I have had a good night’s sleep, as I have been lately, the alarm goes off at 6am and getting out of bed is like crawling out of a deep, dark cave full of warmth and good feeling.  It can’t be over!  Give me more!  Someone knock me back out!  I don’t care if I have to make lunches.  Workout be damned.  Let me be late to work.  I want to sleeeeeeep.


Which leads me to this conclusion: it’s Babygirl’s own fault that we don’t rush in there anymore.  Right?  She’s spoiling us with her long sleep stretches.  She showed us what we’ve been missing, and we’re not going to give it up again without a fight.  Bless her little sleepy heart.

Unless she wakes her brother.