Sleep

When String Bean was three months old, I took her into work to show her around. I’d decided to make my maternity leave permanent and needed to sign some paperwork, and everyone had been asking when they’d get to see her. She was a fussy baby in general, a mama’s girl who wanted nothing to do with strangers, but on that visit she was surprisingly calm, sleeping through most of it as one coworker after another came by to coo at her. One woman, Mary, one of the funny ones I was sure to miss after quitting, asked how she was sleeping at night. A miraculous thing happened at three months old. String Bean discovered her thumb. Sure, now that her bite is getting messed up from thumb-sucking, it isn’t so cute, not to mention the germs I imagine on her thumb every time I watch her slide it into her mouth. But at three months old, thumb-sucking meant self-soothing, and she suddenly started sleeping in a solid block of five or six hours, what we considered to be “through the night” in our sleep-deprived states.

“Wow, that’s great!” Mary said, “Sleeping through the night already. I don’t think my kids slept through the night consistently until they were eight years old.”

Her comment struck me as funny, an obvious joke. Of course kids sleep through the night before they are eight years old. Don’t they? Well, I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old and I’d say it’s a 50/50 chance each night whether I get a full night’s sleep or have to get up with one of them in the night. Last night I was up with Peanut three times due to nightmares and her generally not feeling well. That’s like having a newborn again. If Mary was right, does that mean I only have three more years of interrupted sleep before I’m only getting up semi-regularly with one child? I certainly hope so. Because I miss it. Sleep.

Two Is Enough

Last week, my sister and I both found ourselves home alone with kids while our husbands were out of town. She came over to visit one afternoon, for a much-needed afternoon nap and dinner. I had it all perfectly planned: I’d get the kids lunch, and the excitement of seeing their beloved auntie and cousin would wear them out enough to take a good nap, freeing up a good hour of my time to babysit my niece while my sister napped in my bed.

As predicted, the girls were ecstatic to see their 7-week-old cousin again, thrilled by her open-mouth full gum smiles. I had to rein them in a few times, reminding them not to scream, grab the baby’s hands, or shove each other around as they leaned over the baby. They had lunch and, assured that their cousin would still be there when they woke up, consented to head up to nap. My sister nursed the baby, handed her off, and went up to nap herself.

We had a few quiet minutes before I heard one of my girls crying in her room, quickly growing louder. The baby was almost asleep in my arms, but I knew if I put her down, she’d start to cry, which would wake her mother, so I took her with me to see what was going on.

I opened my 4-year-old’s door to find her holding a dirty diaper in her hand, with a huge ball of poop on the floor between her feet. I kicked into crisis mode. I hushed my daughter, swaddled the baby tighter and put her in my daughter’s bed, with the Ariel pillow propped up for visual stimulation while I sent the pooper to sit on the toilet. I cleaned up the mess on the floor, then my daughter, all while keeping both kids quiet enough not to wake the 2-year-old napping next door, or my sister asleep down the hall. I got the baby up, the 4-year-old back into bed, and managed to make it all the way downstairs before the baby cried. And, miraculously, neither napper woke up, and the 4-year-old soon drifted off to sleep. All in all, a successful afternoon, but those few stressful minutes exhausted me.

If anything has ever solidified my decision not to have any more kids, it was that moment. I remember those games with my two girls, where you’d get one to sleep only to have the other one act up, exhausting yourself trying to keep her from waking up the first one. It was an exhausting time of scrambling to entertain a toddler while run-down on a baby’s ceaseless needs. How do mothers of three possibly do it? You ladies have my utmost respect. You’re stronger women than I am.

Cousin Love

My girls, who were so anxious to meet their new cousin a week after she was born, spent their entire first visit obsessed with my sister’s cat toys. They weren’t impressed by the sleeping swaddled baby who seemed oblivious to them, and barely interacted with her at all.

My sister recently came over with her now one-month-old baby for a visit. My niece is much more alert now, looking all around, making those ridiculously sweet grunting and squealing vocalizations, and she stretches with a single-minded joy, arching her narrow back and testing how far she can spread her toes. This time, with the ability to see their cousin’s eyes, feel her grasp, and convince themselves that her baby noises were just for them, my girls were all over her. Literally.

I gave the girls the run-down on the rules several times before my sister arrived: no touching baby’s face or hands, gentle touching of her belly, legs, and feet is okay, and no screaming in the room with her. They listened well and were able to repeat the rules back to me. Then our visitors arrived, and the girls squealed their welcome in ear-piercing tones (waking the sleeping baby), and proceeded to fight over who got to hold her precious hand.

My unflappable sister was her usual jovial self, gently admonishing them without seeming truly alarmed. I can count on one hand the number of first-time moms I’ve met who wouldn’t panic at the sight of two over-stimulated kids bearing down on her newborn. Actually, I can count them on one finger, as my sister is the only one I’ve met.

After the initial enthusiasm wore off, we were able to get the girls to only hold their cousin’s feet with that vice-grip of love. It’s a good approximation of how we all feel about this newest member of our family, the baby that it took a decade of trying for my sister to have. Most of us are better able to restrain ourselves in the baby’s presence, but as I watched my two girls beaming brightly down at the cousin who has just learned to smile and beamed right back at them, I was immensely grateful for the dog-pile of cousin love on my lap. We should all be so lucky, to enter the world with so much loving anticipation, an entire family desperate to meet us, and two adoring cousins gushing with joy at our mere presence.

Sleep

Ah, the plight of the light sleeper. Sure, sleep when the baby sleeps, everyone said. They forget to tell you that the baby’s longest nap will be at 10am, when you can’t possibly make yourself sleep. Or that her naps will last all of 40 minutes, and if you’re like me, and it takes you 20 minutes to fall asleep, and you’re a light sleeper who jerks back awake at the sound of the baby stirring, you’ll get maybe 3 minutes sleep per 40-minute baby nap, and feel like you’d have been better off not even trying.

My sister is not a light sleeper. She’s one of those “anywhere, anytime” sleepers, and she seems to be coping with her newborn quite well, grabbing a 20-minute nap here, a 30-minute nap there, sleeping in that deep, restful way that I didn’t until my baby was no longer a baby. I’m not saying she’s not tired. She has the puffiness around the eyes and slowed-down thought processes that are the hallmark traits of any new mom, but she doesn’t seem to be suffering from total sleep deprivation the way I was when my firstborn was only a month old.

Part of that is mindset, I think. I expected to handle those early weeks of motherhood quite well. I figured as a lifelong insomniac and light sleeper I’ve had plenty of practice at functioning on far too little sleep. My mistake was the definition of “functioning.” I meant sitting at a computer in a quiet office, editing technical abstracts for 8 hours a day, on a steady stream of coffee. Not having to navigate a 2am diaper explosion while a baby screams to be fed, or trying to figure out how to calm a baby in a swing she hates while taking the shortest shower on record.

My sister also has the benefit of my experience to help her get through. I think while I expected the best-case scenario, she anticipated a much harder one than she got. I have to admit, I have a measure of pride in that. She’s the big sister, the brave adventurous one, and it feels good to be the one going through a tough experience first and doling out helpful advice for a change.

Aunthood

I'm the new aunt of a 2 week old baby. Sharing this experience with my sister has meant trotting out all of my old experiences with nursing, swaddling, pumping, preferred diaper rash creams, and foods that can cause gas in a nursing baby. Digging through my memory banks for these morsels of wisdom has done two things for me.

First, it's made me realize that my babies are no longer babies, in that terribly nostalgic way. As I watch my niece jut out her lower lip in preparation for a full-body cry, I remember that exact expression on my first daughter's face. As she fights heavy eyelids in the swing, I recall how my second daughter loved the swing so much that she napped in it for the first eight months of her life (second-time moms have none of the shame of first time ones, we do what we have to for peace and quiet).

Secondly, I'm oh-so-grateful that those zombie days and sleepless nights, bouts of inexplicable tears and swings between fatigue and manic elation are behind me. I remember several moments, running on a few hours sleep, gazing down at a fussing infant in my arms, at a loss for how to soothe whatever mystery problem was tormenting her, and thinking how ironic that a mother of a newborn is the least equipped person on the planet to be entrusted with the care of such a fragile new person.