Newly Parents | Newlyweds To First Time Parents…and Everything in Between

Things That Go Bump In The Night

// March 22nd, 2010 // Baby

It never fails. You spend an hour rocking and consoling a crying baby. You anxiously wait with each passing rock as his eyes grow heavier and heavier.

He closes his eyes. You hold your breath.

“Is this it? Is he finally asleep?” you ask yourself.

His eyes open back up. He’s not asleep. If sleeping were the kiddy pool, then he’s just dipping his toe in to check the water.

You keep on rocking. Not in the “Woo! Parrrrrty!” way you did back in your younger years when the only thing you were cradling in your arms at 2 am was a case of beer. This time you’re half asleep, in your pajamas and sitting in a rocking chair with a 6 week old baby. You’re staring at the clock and doing the math in your head over what the maximum amount of sleep you can still get before you’re alarm clock goes off.

“If it’s 2am now and I can get him to go to sleep by 2:30 then I can still get 4 hours of sleep.” It’s the sleeping equivalent of the “if a train leaves Los Angeles travelling at 60mph” riddle.

Except now it’s 3am so you’ve had to adjust your calculations a bit. Eventually the baby closes is eyes and you watch him for about five minutes. You’re convinced he’s asleep so you ever so gently get up from the rocking chair and place the baby in his bed. His eyes are still closed and you breathe a sigh of relief. Now you can get some sleep too.

It’s at this point that it doesn’t matter how hard you try, as you head back towards the bed you will inadvertently make as much noise as humanly possible. You’ll bang your knee into the night stand and knock the lamp over. You’ll step on the loudest toy in the house. You’ll roll your ankle as your trip over your own house shoes. Whatever it is that happens, something will happen. After spending so much time and effort into getting the baby back to sleep in the middle of the night, you will quickly undo all of your hard work as you clumsily stumble back to bed and end up waking the baby back up. Now it’s 3:30am and you have a newly energized crying baby again.

It’s at this point you calmly climb back into your bed, roll over next to your wonderful spouse and whisper into their ear, “Honey, it’s your turn.”

Someone needs to sleep like a baby. It might as well be you.