Sleep is for the Weak

Life with a newborn has been crazy to say the least. It has been a mix of emotions that I didn’t know could exist simultaneously – blissful, anxious, frustrated, comical, tired, incredibly amazing. Although everything is so new and unknown to us, it hasn’t been completely unexpected since Kent and I were prudent to read a bunch of books on babies and parenting prior to Ava’s sudden arrival. What has, however, thrown us for a loop is the unbelievable lack of sleep we are experiencing. I mean, we read about it, knew that newborns don’t sleep much, and heard it from every parent when they advised us to ‘nap when the baby naps’. But to actually experience it first hand is hard. Really hard.

Sleep in inherently taken in long stretches to help humans function normally and stay sane, right? How then in God’s name can new parents not go crazy or just plain pass out from getting a mere 3 to 4 hours of interrupted sleep each day? I swear that Ava has a timer hardwired in her brain where she wakes up every 2 hours on the dot. For all you non-parents out there, the 2 hours is from feeding to feeding. Which translates into intervals of one hour to an hour and a half, depending on how long she nurses and how long it takes me to fall asleep. Let me explain – if Ava eats at 10 pm and it takes her around forty five minutes until her head hits the pillow (she has to eat, burp, get a diaper change, and then settle), I have about an hour and fifteen minutes before she wakes up again at midnight to eat again. This cycle continues for the entire night, day in and day out…so far. Since I’ve somehow have been functioning and seemingly have been chasing sleep for the past five weeks, I am also well versed on the all the strange and interesting TV that comes on at night. I’ve watched enough infomercials on ‘Sham-WOW’, Hair Club for Men, Proactive, Bare Essentials Makeup, and ‘Your Baby Can Read’ that I myself can regurgitate all the promos, specs, prices, and shipping and delivery charges. Seriously. Why, you ask, do I watch infomercials instead of regular TV while I’m up at the wee hours of the night? In order to keep Ava in a semi-sleep state so soothing her back to bed is not a tooth and nail fight, I keep the lights off and use the backlight of the TV to navigate through her feedings. It is through the glow of the Ron Popeil Chicken Roster infomercials that I watch my daughter breastfeeding contently and gage if she is really semi-sleeping or just pretending. I also attribute my quick jaunts back to bed to the infomercials since I don’t get caught up watching a movie or show that I got sucked into while breastfeeding. This happened to me early on, where I was tired but would stay up to watch that TBS re-run of Dirty Dancing that was on a two in the morning. Even if I swore to myself that I would turn it off and go to bed when it got to the part when they danced on the log to ‘Hungry Eyes’, I never did and paid for it the next day as I continued to stay up for another couple feedings watching with one eye open.

Besides documenting this time in our life for posterity, I hope we can one day use it as retribution when Ava is older and I need ammunition to guilt her into obeying her curfew or dressing appropriately. For now, Kent and I live for each night and pray every day that ‘tonight’ will be the night that Ava decides to give her poor parents a break and sleep through the night (or even a 3 hour stretch would be awesome). For now, if you happen to see me around and wonder why I am slurring my words or standing upright with my eyes half shut, remember that sleep is for the weak and that I am a warrior of sleep, despite the deprivation.