March 2, 2003
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Babies.
Lookit, I am not going to write about anything important except my own meandering thoughts on just how it is that babies manage to survive the first 6 months on life here on earth. So if you want witty political commentary, or heartfelt angst - keep browsing. Someone out there is less tunnel visioned than I, today.
Babies.
I figure the only damn reason they are cute in the first 6 weeks is so they don't end up abandoned on the steps of the orphanage in a blizzard on Day 3. I am lucky I grow very cute babies. They are very lucky also.
I have babies that do not sleep. I am not talking about the regular run of the mill babies, who sleep for 3 or 4 hours at a time, but babies who sleep for 20 minutes at a time. Just enough time to feel yourself drifting off ... and then the grizzling and grumbling starts. Can someone tell me, how a life that's only been on the planet for 3 weeks can exist in 20 minute sleep blocks? Even goldfish sleep longer. Hell I bet I can find paramecium who sleep longer. Higher life form, my ass.
So for those of you who've blessedly missed (or chose to miss, smart things) the bliss of new parentdom and sleep deprivation - when your child sleeps 20 minutes out of an hour - this is how your day breaks down:
8am - 9am - feed and cajole child to stay awake so you don't take 2 hours to feed.
9am - 9:20am - little nap. Nothing wakes or prevents child from sleeping. It's like trying to deal with a big warm blob of playdo.
9:21am - 11:45am - screaming, fussing, crying and grizzling begins. All attempts to settle babe back into that bliss state known as sleep fails. Resort to carrying bub on shoulder, while doing jigsaw puzzles in my puke stained nightgown with toddler, avoiding sight of sad sorry self in mirror. Muse that this is the last sight your husband saw before he went off to work with young taut terrific office hotties.
11:45 - 12:45pm - feed. See as before.
12:45pm - 4:00pm. Go out for a walk with toddler and baby, who is surprisingly content looking at the world for about 2.5 hours more than every fucking parenting book tells me is healthy. Baby resists all attempts to shut off the outside world and allow her to wind down. Mama gives up and thinks longingly of the gin bottle in the freezer. Toddler naps from 1 - 3pm, while mama does the dishes and picks up the house one handed, with leaking boobs.
4:01pm - 5:01pm - feed. See as before. Add in Toddler dancing around screaming for her dinner and shaking loud annoying rattle in baby's face.
5:02pm - 8:02pm - Prepare dinner. Leave baby on the floor since babies and ovens should not be juxtaposed in my current frame of mind. Tell Toddler not to step on baby, not to shake annoying rattle in her face, not to scrub her face with a bath towel, not to shriek 'LOOOK AT ME BABEEE', not to perform somersaults over the baby, not to feed baby bright green playdo, not to feed the baby CocoaPops, and quite frankly not to do any damn thing. Feed Toddler some sort of yucky meal that she hates and won't eat without serious threats of child abandonment. Read story to Toddler, avoid poking still awake baby in the eye with Cat in the Hat. Put Toddler to bed one handed. Get sippy cup, get extra blanket, take Toddler to the toilet 'just one more time', threaten Toddler with dismemberment if she doesn't go to sleep right now.
8:05pm - 8:30pm Make 'big people's dinner'. It looks like shit, prolly cos it's been done one handed. Hub walks in. Don't ask him how his day was, you don't give a fuck. He dealt with grownups all day. Shove wide awake baby in his arms, burst into tears and tell him to feed her before you run away to the Himalayas.
8:35pm - 9:45pm - Attempt to settle baby. Attempt to talk to husband about his shitty day. Dinner is cold, scrape into garbage. Attempt not to ask husband if it was any good - you don't care all that much anyway. Attempt not to snarl, attempt not to cry, attempt not to pour oneself one big motherfucking Gin martini with no ice, no olives and no twist. Attempt not to gulp it down over the kitchen sink in front of husband.
10pm - 11pm. go to bed with baby. Baby sleeps for 40 minutes, during which, you get 20 minutes sleep. AAAAAH, that feels good. Settle baby by putting her on your chest and saying 'sshhh, sshh, sshh' every 10 seconds. Baby falls asleep and so do you.
12am - 1am Baby awake for her feed. Lie there, feeling this is all a horrible nightmare, try the 'sshh, sshh' approach - baby ain't having none of it. Feed baby, use her 20 minutes of nap time to scarf down some chocolate and sneak a smoke - hey, that's dinner.
1am - 4am. Settle baby, drift into sleep, resettle baby, drift into sleep. Discover you are dreaming about George Clooney who you don't even find attractive. That's how fucked in the head you are.
4am - 5am - Give up. Feed baby.
5am - 6am - Drift, George, sleep, more George, settle baby, George again.
6am - Toddler wakes up. So does hub. and the real 'working day' begins.
So you see? If my children weren't cute, they would have little if no chance of survival. And it's no coincidence that babies start to respond to you about the 6 week mark. Cos I figure, that's about the time you are seriously whacked out and in need of either some mood altering drugs or a jacket without sleeves. So that's when they smile, or look very cute. It's a survival mechanism. Cos let's face it, all they do before that is wobble around on necks too small for their big old bald heads, burp, fart, shit, puke, and wobble some more. They are made cute, as blackmail. To guilt you into continuing to go through such torture until they understand the meaning of a hissed snarl to 'go to sleep' at 3am.
One last thing - and the biggest trick of survival is that you, the parents, manage to blank out all this hell, so you have more. That's the real reason to be sleep deprived. So 9 months down the track, when the babe is seriously cute and getting lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from old crusties at the bus stop - you cannot remember just how bad it was. And so you decide to have another.
And that's my theory of babies.
Now someone tell me why I am dreaming about George Clooney.
Comments (20)
Well: the question first. George is no doubt the figment of sleep deprivation
. I was no fan of the infancy stage of either of my girls. At all. Nothing pleased me about it, pretty much. Whew, can I feel your pain! The only things that saved me were my sling and co-sleeping (of course, we're still all co-sleeping......but anyway). And I thought my one-hour-sleepers were too much. Hang in there! I hear it gets better -- uh -- when they're teenagers???
Didn't George's character leave ER because he helped a mom kill her son or something?
(Oooh, I hope the sleep deprivation hasn't gotten to your wicked sense of humour yet...)
Excellent blog and I hope that writing it was cathartic for you!
I don't know if you read rache or not, but I suspect that you'd enjoy her ways of dealing with the same stress...
She wrote about her woes with the kids a few days ago...
Truly, laughter is the best medicine.
oh good, I'm so glad you didn't temper that for all us idiotic second-time around mothers-to-be.
Momnesia....yeah...haven't got that yet. Kinda hope I never do, cause I really don't want to revisit the hell that was infancy, which, compared to your situation was an apparent walk in the park.
I'm sending baby soporific vibes your way, Mama.
All I can say is that I've SO been there. A pox on all the mamas with babies that slept well during the first few months.
Hugs, mama. and empathy.
That's some good wisdom there
Be glad it was only George Clooney and not Bush
Hey! I love your blog! My dd is 2 now, but I remember that first year- though it's all kinda fuzzy and blurred togethor.
What hepled me was calling my dh at work and screaming at him. And when he quit taking my calls, I im'd and e-mailed him. I usually said something along the lines of, "What is wrong with my children! Obviously they are not right because other people have happy babies who sleep and don't cry all day. This sucks! You would die if you were in my place!!! AGHGHH! What time will you be home?"
Also- my very colicky daughter would stop crying if I turned the vaccuum cleaner on and left it plugged in. Sometimes it was on for over an hour. I learned to sleep through that noise!
And if all else failed- taking them out of the house seemed to mellow my kids.
I hope you get some sleep soon. I feel so tired for you!
Excellent, as usual!
But, oh my god, did I actually tell my husband last night I thought it would be a good idea to try again?
HANG IN THERE TOOTS!!!
It took me over six years to have my second...for these very reasons.
Had my tubes tied after the second.
'Nuff said.
{{{HUGS}}}
You're more articulate and thoughtful while sleep deprived than the average person after a full 8 hours of rest.
Just remember that what you're doing is AWESOME. Don't wait for others to appreciate you. Appreciate yourself EVERY DAY. Look in the mirror and say, I KICK SOME SERIOUS ASS! Be confident that what you're doing is important and prestigious. You've brought life into the world. There's nothing more fundamental or basic than that. Let the 19-year-old office hotties answer phones and party til 2am and refill the toner in the copy machine. We've all had our time when we were free and unburdened by responsibility, but there's nothing very rewarding or exotic about it.
What do associate with George Clooney? I think of a swinger lifestyle. A sexy kind of reckless abandon. Glamour. He's not your average family man. He's not someone you think of as saddled with a mortgage payment and a couple of kids. Maybe that's why you dreamt about him?
I think what makes him least desirable is the knowledge that what he has is fleeting. What you have is enduring.
I did not have it quite so rough, but I remember somewhere around the 2 month mark thinking "I understand why people would do this again." I guess it was that 6 week positive feedback thing. (smiles) Before that, it was all negative feedback.
brilliant, as usual. and george clooney is hot. mwah.
one gin martini a day is very helpful for me, maybe every other day in the first 6 weeks postpartum.
I'm at 9 months with the 2nd child and still happy with my decision to only have 2. I'll be very happy when baby learns to crawl, so she can go after the 3 yr old and smack him and grab back a toy.
Ah, your writing is so freakin' brilliant and wonderful. Funny, too - although I know how real it can be - and that's tragic.
May you have a deep sleep-filled night soon!
Oh I so know what you mean. And I think I suffer from memory loss. My first baby decided if I slept for more than 10 minutes something was wrong and then I had a second!!!!!! But I learnt my lesson. I stopped after number two.
I agree, at 9 months you are ready for another. Why is it exactly 9 months? Does your uterus suddenly realize it's been empty as long as it was full?
You forget, you do forget the shit, but it is right there ready to recall if you need to. Like whne I start thinkingit's time for another..
Never never never never never again. Thank you fo reminding me why I only have ONE. Not that I needed reminding, but it can't hurt. Big gin martini honey, you are doing just fine. I believe the cute thing, too, by the way, which is why the bean was never fed to the wolves or left out on the stoop overnight to see if she would survive.
Unbelievable - Pickle is 14 months and I had totally blanked out the horrific first three months ('cept for being cracked and bleeding - THAT I'm STILL recovering from psychologically!!!). Must run in the family - mine was Luke Perry and totally freaked me out....
Hang in there love.
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