Sleep, or lack thereof

I wish I was one of those people who doesn't need a lot of sleep. I love sleep, but more importantly, I hate being tired. I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep, looking forward to bedtime, trying to plan the perfect nap. I have become so obsessed with sleep that I have turned the corner and it is now a guilty pleasure, which means that I associate it with selfishness, which means that I can't nap any more. Having two small children, as you might imagine, doesn't help.

When my son was born, more than four years ago, I had a long labor, an emergency c-section, and a difficult recovery. My son weighed almost eleven pounds at birth, and must have had his heart set on body building early in life, because he insisted on eating every hour or so to pack on more pounds. Neither of us had blood sugar problems, he was, and is, huge. He's mostly just tall now, but he's never been below the 95% in height or weight for his age. Point being, he needed to eat a lot to get as big as he is, so he made eating, not sleeping, his main newborn goal.

As a result, there was not a lot of sleeping going on in my house for several months. The trouble I had delivering him exhausted me more than I can describe, and then my husband and I had to take him home and get up every couple of hours to feed him. I know, I know, it is what it is; babies don't sleep through the night and no matter how wrecked you are after delivery, you just have to deal with it. But it just seems empirically unfair that, after major surgery, which, in any other circumstance would result in lots of pampering and sleeping all day and night to recover, is followed by a violent reduction in sleep. Every night. For months and months.

I also remember, in addition to the total despair I felt when I climbed into bed at night, knowing that the process of doing so was mostly just a terrible tease and that there would be no sleep, that I was totally alone. Don't get me wrong, my husband is one of those rock star husbands who would literally walk around the bed to pick up my son and hand him to me to nurse from the bassinet that was next to my side of the bed, so he was almost as sleep deprived as I was. It had more to do with the people I would talk to who had children, but did not talk about their days with a newborn using the intense hyberbole I did. They didn't use words like "torture" or "despair" or "kill me now because I can't survive another moment this tired" when they discussed the first few months after their babies were born. I thought I was truly the only one.

But then it did get better. Holden started sleeping through the night, thanks be to sleep training, and I started to catch up a bit, and my memory faded, and we decided to have another baby. I was delighted to find out I was pregnant again, and then the hormones kicked in and I got tired. That bone aching tired that pregnancy hormones create, which brought back the memories of Holden's first months. Which made me start to panic. What had we done? I was just getting used to better sleep! How could I have signed up for this again?

My fear of the newborn months haunted me throughout the pregnancy, but I told myself it would be better this time. I knew what I was getting into, I wouldn't have a 30-hour labor before delivering this time (scheduled repeat c-section), and I could hold on for a few months. Truthfully, that was a healthy dose of denial and self-deception to ease the rising tide of terror about the coming exhaustion. The thought of being that tired again was far scarier than the major abdominal surgery I was about to undergo a second time, than the fear of birth defects, than the fear of adding a baby to a family I thought was already perfect. Can sleep really be that important to anyone?

It is to me. I was raised in the midwest, which taught me to immediately reject as whining any kind of complaining, so I tend to be very stoic. I don't mind needles, I don't complain about severe dental pain, if the elevator is out of order, I walk six flights while telling myself I need the exercise. I get that hearing someone complain about being tired is about as interesting as watching paint dry. I just couldn't stop myself from writing this post, and it's because exhaustion is so painful to me that it warrants a good whine.

But here's where the midwesterner in me rises up; things are so much better now. When Tessa was born (exactly 51 weeks ago today), I felt awesome. My scheduled c-section delivery was so easy that the happy hormones that kick in after the birth of a baby were noticeable and delightful. I nursed her successfully every two-three hours in the hospital and slept peacefully in between feedings. And when we got home from the hospital, she slept in her crib, every night, for the first ten weeks of her life, from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.

I am still tired every day. I haven't slept past 6:00 a.m. in a year, and my husband is in the same boat (in fact, he says he's far more exhausted with Tessa than he was when Holden was a baby). But it's so much better. It's not the kind of tired that aches in your bones and makes you want to vomit. Like that soreness after you go to the gym is a good soreness, it's a good tired. If there ever was such a thing.

Next week, I'm going to a conference, away from the family for the first time since Tessa was born. And the week after that, Josh and I are going to San Francisco for his conference. I will blog about the importance of ditching the kids for a few days in another post another day, but suffice it to say, I plan on sleeping past 6:00 a.m. You heard me right. I might even make it to 6:30 once or twice. Heaven.