Nights

As my wife and I approach four weeks already (wow), we’re still at the stage where we hope for a good night, but expect the worst.

We have had our ups and downs, as could be expected.  To start, my wife had a spinal migraine from the epidural so she had to lay flat until the migraine went away.  It didn’t.  Therefore, after a week we were back at the hospital getting a blood patch.  It worked immediately.  Thank God.

During that week, however, was our son’s worst night.  He woke up around 12:45 in the morning screaming and crying like you wouldn’t believe.  He has been consistently gasy so we figured he was trying to push out some gas.  I walked him around the house, rocked him in the glider, rubbed his belly and his back, sang him songs, read him books, played lullabies – nothing worked.  Keep in mind, this was the second day we were home from the hospital.  We still didn’t have a clue what we were doing.  As the sun began to rise, I hoped this was a once-in-a-long-while event.  I didn’t get to take a nap until around 3:00pm the next day.  Holy cow was I a complete zombie.

The good news was we were meeting with our lactation consultant that morning.  She made it very simple: he was hungry.  Wow.  Of course.  Why didn’t we think of that?  It seems so simple.  Let’s put it this way, since then, when we know he has a clean diaper and he’s still freaking out, he gets fed – much to the dismay of my wife.

Then, there was another freak night around the two-week point.  Our son slept for four hours, then three.  It was glorious.  Of course, the next night was more like a one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour schedule.  Yea, not fun.

As, I’m sure, most parents have experienced, you go through a patch at the beginning where nights are a crap-shoot.  Some are good, some bad, some okay, and some horrible.  We’ve hit a slide now where our son will sleep three to four hours right when we go to bed, then do either every two hours or sometimes one hour here, two hours there.

It’s getting better and we know that we’ll eventually be putting him down and we’ll be getting up once to feed and change.  That will be welcomed, but neither my wife or I wish time away and we really are trying to live in the moment, but man, wouldn’t that be great?!

I’m preaching to the choir for experienced parents.  New parents or expecting ones – all I would say is put your head down and get through it.  We’re right smack-dab in the middle of it and as long as your work as a team, you make it work and get through it.  I can’t say I’m wide awake at work, but I’m making due.