Something They Don't Tell You...

Everyone tells you, repeatedly and with great mirth, that having a newborn destroys your sleep schedule. No one ever mentions that you start this grand new adventure thoroughly exhausted.

A dozen years ago, when my ex was pregnant with my little man, I was working the overnight shift at Target. His birth coincided with me switching that job for the one that had me making and baking bagels, again on the overnight shift. By the time that job was over, he was sleeping through the night.

So I have been completely and utterly unprepared for this lack of restful sleep.

No, Goose isn't here yet. No, I'm not overly stressed out. Yes, Goose and stress are responsible for my lack of sleep.

You see, my wife has stopped sleeping well. The gigantic parasite living in her uterus is causing her all sorts of discomfort. She has heartburn and indigestion. She has hip and pelvis pain. She has a huge, heavy lump attached to the front of her body. She can't breathe as well as she used to, due to insufficient lung capacity caused by, you guessed it, a baby sitting on her diaphragm.

All of these factors have destroyed our ability to sleep. She can't get comfortable, so she tosses and turns quite a bit. Thanks to the hip and pelvic pain, that tossing actually hurts, which causes moaning and whimpering. On the rare occasions it doesn't hurt, it's just a physical struggle to roll over and drag the weight of Goose around the bed, the source of the grunting and groaning. When she does manage to find a semi-comfortable position in which to sleep, she snores like a lumberjack for about an hour. Then she has to get up to empty her bladder, which I swear can only hold a teaspoon of liquid at this point, and the whole process starts all over again.

Maybe this is nature's way of making sure we appreciate the semi-regularity of an infant's schedule... maybe this is a way to make sure we're not so shocked by the lack of sleep that we stop procreating altogether.

Maybe this is one of those moments where I have to remind myself that we did this to ourselves on purpose, that we tried for years to make this happen, and that we're just happy to have been blessed with the opportunity to lose sleep for something so special.

And maybe I'm going to go take some Nyquil with a vodka chaser and go back to bed.

-A