Who needs sleep?

Parents who are fortunate enough to have infants that sleep through the night (that being defined, in parent-speak, as a six hour window while it is dark outside) are both envied and despised by the rest of the parenting population. For a brief, magical period of time, we were those despised parents, who woke every morning at five a.m. to our daughters gentle nonsense coming over the monitor only a little bleary-eyed.

Then, one day a few months ago, Olivia decided to wake up at three. Then two. Then three again.

We were in denial for a while. Just a phase. Just a few off nights. She got thrown off by going out of town, by the change in time, by teething, by the state of modern political discourse. Ultimately, we had to admit, she was not sleeping through the night anymore. We got a night here or there, but nothing consistent.

As I have noted previously, Wife is the most awesome wife ever. While these middle of the night wakings are a bit of a pain for me, it is she who gets up to deal with them the vast, overwhelming majority of the time. Our usual midnight dialogue: Me: "grumble grumble work in the morning snore"; Wife: (as she stumbles to the nursery) I hate you." Yet, awesome as she is, Wife is not superhuman. When faced with a choice, at three a.m., between rocking our infant for an hour to soothe her back to sleep in her own room, or plopping her between two warm adult bodies in our own bed, keeping a firm finger on her pacifier, and going back to sleep immediately herself, Wife will choose the latter in 99 out of 100 cases. (The 100th being the "kick the husband until he fixes it solution.") The other alternative is the "cry it out" approach, which we were grand proponents of before we had a real live kid. This approach has the added disadvantage over the rocking solution of interrupting both parents sleep equally. I therefore reject it out of hand.

This is how we have come to the tradition of having the baby in the bed with us when I wake up in the morning.  Or, put another way, having a baby in the bed wake me up in the morning.

I'm usually a snooze alarm guy. I know, intellectually, that I am not getting useful sleep after that first alarm goes off. My response is "shut up, my bed is warm and cozy." But now, when I roll away to hit the Snooze, I run into an issue. In that instant, my sleeping infant daughter, so sweet and gentle, who is normally the rough diameter of a large roll of bounty paper towels and fits neatly between the Wife and I... that daughter expands instantaneously to take up the entirety of my side of the bed. While still asleep. So....I guess I'll take my shower ten minutes earlier...

I've also discovered how tall my little girl is getting in the worst possible way. While her tiny head still rests neatly at shoulder level with Wife and me while she sleeps in our bed, her feet are now in a position to do serious damage to her future siblings should her dreams call for tremendous kicking. (I think she replays the 1994 World Cup in her dreams about once a week). Awesome way to wake up. Really.

The best though, is when she wakes up in our bed, happy and bubbly, at 4:13 A.M. wanting to play. These days will never come again, and she's so cute and happy, and just wants to play with Daddy's hair and taste his nose and it's adorable. BUT IT'S 4:13 IN THE FREAKING MORNING.

Sleep loss is part of the package deal, and it creeps up on you in all kinds of subtle and not so subtle ways. The 2:30 kick in the boys being one of the less subtle ways. Nonetheless, it's worth it. I wouldn't trade it for all the sleep I could ever want.

Still...when the grandparents come to town, I'm taking a damn nap.

Monday, Monday

I am a very typical office drone in the sense that I really drag on Mondays. I love the weekends, and it takes me a while to get started on Mondays. I loathe scheduling anything on Monday, and this goes double for Mondays that follow long weekends and days off (yesterday was one such Monday) - there's usually too many fires to put out to make it worthwhile.

Long story short - there's a very short list of things I wouldn't do to avoid Mondays.

Spending seven hours in a hospital with a wife in extreme pain is on that very short list.

My wife is fine, and the baby is fine, and for clarity's sake the baby is still in utero (not a Nirvana album - actually still in my wife). In fact, at no point yesterday was our baby in any distress whatsoever, as evidenced by the constant and enthusiastic kicks she gave the fetal heart monitor my wife wore in the Maternal Assessment Center. You think nails on a chalk board make an annoying sound? Try the squawk of a fetal heart monitor with the volume on ten while your baby does an impression of a Japanese women's soccer player scoring on an American goalie.

I'm sorry. Too soon?

Still, we had a bit of an adventure yesterday, with my wife extremely uncomfortable for the vast majority of the day, and only slightly better today. After seven hours we were discharged, only really knowing what the problem wasn't - no kidney stones or gall stones. Just extremely painful muscle spasms on her right side. Having felt pretty much useless for most of the day (not at all helped by what I think was my first ever migraine) I wonder how I will react when my wife is actually in labor. I kinda hope I can be less of a lump when the time comes than I was yesterday.

Also, although my wife maintains she was perfectly clear in her Facebook post from the hospital, I would like to apologize to anyone who was caused worry, panic, distress, bloating, or mild diarrhea by the post referencing IVs and monitors on her day off. I fielded more than a few phone calls, emails, and texts yesterday, and we are very grateful for your concern. Everyone is fine, and the countdown to baby continues.





Vaguebooking or not? You be the judge.

Great thanks are owed to the staff at LMC's Maternal Assessment Center. They were a great comfort, and very professional. And although waiting in a hospital for seven hours is never going to be a fun way to spend a day, waiting in a private room with a recliner and cable TV is about as good as the experience can get.

For those of you who have asked, my inevitable review of Harry Potter is on the way. I wanted to allow at least the opening weekend to come and go before posting it so those who really wanted to see it without the temptation of spoilers and or positive/negative hype coloring their view would have that opportunity. That said, if you really wanted to avoid all that I suppose you could just not read any such post until after you'd seen the movie. Oh well. Chalk it up to needless courtesy.