The amazing power of a sleeping infant

November 25, 2008

Have you ever noticed a sleeping infant is like a drug? It almost every aspect. I mean almost everything in the world of the baby somehow revolves around sleep - either yours or the baby's. I mean, sure, there's "eating" and crap that like - but man, for the first couple of months - it's sleep.

First, especially trying to coax your baby to sleep, sleep is like crack. You (okay, maybe you won't but I will) will do almost anything to get him to sleep. It's pathetic. I mean ANYTHING. Drive over 60 in a parking lot? When you have a baby who wakes up screaming anytime you drop below 60 - yeah, you'll do it. That actually sounds like an awesome movie. You are being held hostage by a terror beyond your control - drop below 60 and it's the end of us all.

And then when you aren't able to get the wee one to sleep, you really start to lose your mind. It's like you've taken some bad acid or something (I've heard, I mean how the hell would I know?) When it's 4am and you have a one month old who just looks up at you totally happy and wide awake looking up at you with a "hey - how you doing?" sort of look, you start to panic a little. Not only do you panic with a, holy crap - why isn't he going back to sleep, sort of way, but you actually start to lose your mind. You start talking to yourself and cease to have a functioning brain. By the way, Julie thinks I am impossible to be around if I haven't gotten enough sleep (enough sleep in this case being four consecutive hours). She walks around basically telling me how miserable I am. That is really helpful too - totally puts me in a better mood.

But my personal favorite is when he is sleeping in your arms. It is the worlds biggest sedative. He's all warm and we have this fuzzy blanket on him - and it is impossible to stay awake. I mean you try, but you can just feel your eyes started to weigh like 400 pounds and your head starts to do that slow nod where it sways and sways and the slams back jolting you and the baby awake. That's awesome, and completely unavoidable. No matter how hard I try to stay awake, when I am holding, you can feel this wave of sleep wash over you.

And when you finally lay him down and he settles in (and now you can go to bed), it's ecstasy. Its just such a stress release - it's like 'finally, he's down. now I can go accomplish 400 things before he wakes up.' For me items 1 through 399 are sleep, but Julie actually tries to get shit done.