Who Needs Sleep? (Well, You're Never Gonna Get It.)

Forgive the fact that I just quoted from a Barenaked Ladies song. It's been running through my head since about 4am this morning when I finally woke my husband to take our angelically sleeping babe from my aching arms.

It was a dark and stormy night. I listened to the rain and wind lashing against the nursery windows while I gazed into my daughter's slumbering face, half entranced by her cuteness and half terrified by her almost supernatural ability to go from deep sleep to fussy wakefulness the moment I put her down. Because the minute you put a deeply asleep but secretly fussy baby down, she will wake up, need a diaper change (again), by that time be fully awake (again), and then need to be fed (again), burped, and coaxed back into sleep, in your arms, in the nursery chair, in the dead of night much to your bleary-eyed distress. While your generally much beloved but temporarily reviled husband snores the night away in the next room.

In general Halle is a wonderful baby. She rarely cries, even at night. She is not terribly fussy, and during the day I can put her in the Boppy bouncer or the Moses basket and she'll snooze for an hour or two between feedings. But something happens at night, some sort of dark baby voodoo that turns our mellow babe who will sleep anywhere into a persnickety infant who can not only stay awake for several hours, but can also nurse for several hours and refuse to sleep on her back anywhere but in Mommy's arms. And as the Mommy in question, part of me is delighted to cradle her because she's so beautiful. But the part of me that needs sleep spends most nights close to tears in the nursery chair, dozing on and off and developing one hell of a neck crick.

Now, it's easy to relegate all of my comments to the "Mommy is Kvetching, What Did She Expect" folder (he would never admit to it, but I bet that's exactly what my husband was thinking at 4am this morning when I shoved him until he sat up), but moms need sleep. First of all, we need to rest in order to produce breast milk, and secondly there are links between fatigue and postpartum depression. I asked our pediatrician for help and he suggested a vibrating chair, so we're off to Toys R Us today to add to the growing pile of baby paraphernalia in the apartment. We now have a Moby wrap, an ergo baby carrier, a Boppy manual bouncer, a Moses basket, a co-sleeper (ha ha ha) and a handful of different swaddling blankets. It's a little ridiculous, but I think normal for new parents. You think each new product will make life easy...but the truth of it is, and this is starting to sink in, that we just need to get to know Halle's needs and likes, and then most of our baby gear will be irrelevant. Still, I have hopes for the vibrating chair. Perhaps tonight I will sleep between feedings while Halle, Mommy and Daddy snooze against a soundscape of light buzzing and soothing music.

Well, it's important to dream...waking or sleeping.