When my wife was pregnant I started to feel some sleep deprivation. She was up frequently with runs to the bathroom, some food cravings, or feeling the aches and pains of carrying a child in her stomach. I would often wake, if only for a few seconds, then back into slumber I went. I would arise in the morning feeling less than well rested, but still useful to varying degrees.
Given all that went on with sleep in the third trimester I assumed that it would prepare me for the massive sleep deprivation that would ensue when having an infant in the home. I was never more wrong in my entire life.
Parents warned me about how I would never sleep after Kenadie was born, but I would shrug such doomsday predictions off, thinking I could handle it swimmingly. Arrogance got the better of me when the sudden realization that a full eight hours of sleep would be months, if not years, away.
The wife and I scrambled to find a solution to Kenadie not wanting to allow us some sleep. We tried everything from night time rituals, music, and various products with questionable evidence if they actually work. After about a month we came to the horrific realization that we were at the mercy of our infant, and she would sleep on her own schedule, and there's was little to nothing we could do about it.
People have attempted to give us advice on what to do when a baby decides to be a night owl, but I seriously wonder if they actually had any success, or if they were just trying to make us think they were the best parents since the Nelsons. It's humbling to think that you can't outsmart a person who has the memory span of maybe twenty four hours, but such is parenting.
My baby loves some attention, as some nights I can rock her gently to sleep pretty easily, but the second I put her down she's as wired as a meth addict and as cranky as Ted Nugent at a vegan restaurant. She's my daughter and I'm happy to give her any and all attention needed, but I sometimes wonder what this lack of sleep is doing to my brain. The moment when feeding time arises I wake up and break to the kitchen to make a bottle, but if my wife requests something else I forget half the time what it was she wanted by the time I exit the bedroom. I sometimes wonder if I'll end up leaving the house without pants if this continues.
"A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made." - Sammy Davis, Jr.
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