You know what's funny about having an infant live at your house? How you never, never, ever get to really sleep again. EVER. (Sleep deprivation may have perhaps contributed to the rambling quality of this post, now that I think about it.)
I know, I know, you have a friend who has a friend whose baby started sleeping through the night at eight weeks, right? Well guess what? I think your friend of a friend is a big lying liar who wants to impress people at parties by talking about his or her excellent-sleeping baby. In fact, I only have one person I trust who claims with a straight face that her baby sleeps through the night for eight or more hours, and I think she feeds her baby whiskey and Vicodin. As far as I'm concerned, babies who sleep through the night are like unicorns: lovely, but mythical.
This weekend Matt and I spent time with some friends of ours (we'll call them "Sam" and "Sarah") who excitedly confessed to us that they are expecting a baby; Sarah is eight weeks along. We were and are thrilled for them, and we spent much of the visit oohing and aahing and talking about their upcoming attraction. About thirty minutes into the "hooray you're having a baby!" conversation, though, Sarah began talking about how her pregnancy symptoms are making her miserable. (Just to be clear, I am totally sympathetic on this point. I remember how miserable pregnancy can be, even though the ultimate outcome [Gabe the Chubby and Delicious] was excellent for me.) Specifically, she talked at length about how she's "so sleep deprived" because she has to wake up twice a night to pee. She went on for a while about how sleep is really important to her, and how this has taken a toll on her. Sam nodded gravely and held her hand as she regaled us with her tales of repeated nocturnal bathroom visits.
I couldn't help myself - about four minutes into her speech I rolled my eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't fall out of my head (yes, I am evil and judgmental, thank you very much). And I wasn't alone in my evil judgment, either: as she talked and talked, I could feel Matt tense up next to me. He never quite relaxed again during the remainder of their visit, and the minute we closed the door behind them after kissing them goodbye and congratulating them for the hundreth time, Matt turned to me and said, "They are so screwed. They are so screwed." I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded. He was right. They are doomed, doomed, doomed.
We haven't had a solid night of sleep in months. MONTHS. (Actually Matt has had one single night of good sleep: the night after he pulled a muscle in his back and his doctor prescribed him a muscle relaxer sufficient to fell a Shetland pony. It knocked him out cold and made him a little groggy even the next day. I won't even try to describe my jealousy when the baby began howling at 4:00 a.m. and he didn't so much as twitch.)
You see, without fail, Gabe wakes up at least once a night to eat. We "dream feed" him at 11:00 p.m., but that doesn't carry him through til morning. He needs one more feeding. Usually this takes place between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., but it can happen as early as 1:15 a.m and as late as 5:00 a.m. The exact time doesn't really matter to me anymore. I know that at some point in the wee hours Gabe will start to cry loudly enough to wake Matt and myself, and I will stumble in and feed him, then rock him, kiss his fat cheeks, lay him back down in his cozy crib, and hope like hell that he falls back asleep easily. If he cries a second time before 6:00 a.m., then it's Matt's turn. (I used to feel guilty about making him take a turn, but nearly eight months in I've decided it's only fair to share.)
So back to Sarah and Sam. As we watched them pull away in their car, it occurred to me that maybe it would have been kind of us to try and adjust their expectations slightly. Maybe we would have been better friends if we had honestly told them that the nightime peeing really wasn't a big deal, and that they had many more long and sleepless nights in their future. But I couldn't do it for two reasons.
First, because you can't understand it until you're living it. When I got pregnant I knew, on an intellectual level, that I would be very, very tired as a new parent, but I didn't understand the depth of the exhaustion that awaited. No one can. Sleep deprivation is cumulative. It wasn't until I had gone several weeks, never sleeping more than three hours in a stretch, that I grasped completely what Matt and I had gotten ourselves into.
Second, I didn't want to break their spirits by telling them that I find Gabe's current dream-feed-then-up-at-least-once-a-night situation to be totally and completely livable, and that I actually think we're lucky. But it's true. His once-a-night schedule is not that bad. It's certainly a huge improvement from Gabe's first twelve weeks of life, when he would wake up every two hours like clockwork, whether he was hungry or not. (That was tough, people. That was really tough.) It's also much better than my friend L's baby who at 14 months old wakes up three times a night to eat.
Do I like getting up at 3:27 a.m? No, but I don't really mind it. There is something sweet and fine about curling up in the big armchair with my baby in the middle of the night, feeling his soft breath go in and out, feeling the weight of his little body against mine as he eats his late-night meal. Often after he has finished he will smile up at me sleepily, and his small hand will reach up to pat my cheek. These moments have a delicious, stolen feeling to them - I know when I am old and gray I will remember how Gabe used to pat my cheek and smile his milky smile.
So I didn't say anything to Sarah and Sam. I just watched them pull away from the curb, and I smiled a little to myself, thinking of the long nights that await them in the coming months. Or not. Maybe they'll get one of the mythical babies who sleep through the night at three weeks, and I will feel like a big fat idiot about this entire dumb post.
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