It Does Get Better, Kinda

Last week as I sat in a deposition that was way longer than it needed to be, I noticed that one of the attorneys kept getting up to use the bathroom.  When I saw the ginormous cup of coffee in front of him that never seemed to get empty (even though it was 4 in the afternoon), the behavior seemed to make sense.  After the second or third trip to the coffee pot, the attorney explained that he and his wife have a 3 month old baby and despite their best efforts, the baby was only sleeping 5 hour stretches and would party between the hours of 4am and 8am until finally passing out, right around the time he needed to head in to the office.  He went on to say that exhaustion was a pretty constant state of being for him.

My response?  “Well, just so you know, it doesn’t get better.”

Not exactly a beacon of positive parenting, but at least I restrained myself from telling him about the wakeful period that kicks in a few weeks after you do get your newborn to start sleeping through the night.  So at least there’s that.  Regardless, I immediately regretted what I said.  I felt like one of those people who upon the announcement that you’re pregnant seem to delight in the fact that you have several months/years of sleep deprivation in front of you.  And want to tell you all about it.  Even if they never had kids themselves.

Normally, I go out of my way to provide comfort and support to another parent in the “newborn trenches” or even those that don’t know what the trenches look like (yet), but the night before, Hazeline had an unusually rough night.  I was up at least 3-5 times for her alone, and then around 6 am when I finally fell back asleep, Greenleigh lost her mind and I had to go calm her before she woke Hazeline up.  Coupled with the tough nights as a result our episode of Hand, Food & Mouth Disease from the week before, I was tired.  I was cranky.  It was, overall, a bad day to get any support or encouragement from me, but then again, that’s not exactly what he was looking for.  I volunteered it.

But in my tired and cranky state, I lied.  The truth is – It does get better.  It’s hard to see when you are in those first few months and your newborn is struggling to grasp the idea of consecutive hours of sleep, but you will in fact, sleep again.  “Better” may be relative depending on the child, but it will get better compared to the first few weeks and months.  Or at least, it did for me.  And while I’m pretty sure that attorney will never talk about his baby in front of me again, I wish I could go back and tell the truth.

But in giving him that hope, I would also tell him that sleep will never be the same as it was before his child was born.  I mean, that deep, delicious, endless sleep is gone.  For a very long time, if not forever.  Days when I slept until noon, no longer happen even if my kids aren’t in the house.    Instead, I’ve found myself staring at the ceiling at 7am on a Sunday wondering when they are going to get up.  This past Saturday while we were away in Orlando, Erajh and I had to fight the urge to wake the girls up at 8:30am, because we had been up for at least a half hour by that point.  Our girls have trained us.  We’ve learned to sleep differently.  And according to my friends that have older kids, this condition persists long after the kids leave the house for college or to live on their own.

Instead you will learn to enjoy sleep susceptible to monitor noises or little feet tip-toeing in to your room.  You will relish the day when your toddler tells you they are tired before their normal bedtime and goes to sleep a whole hour before schedule.  Some days you’ll even get an entire night sleep without so much as a sound coming through the baby monitor to just to wake up startled, assume the worst, and go running into their room to check if they are breathing…waking them up in the process.  But sleep will happen again.

Is post-baby sleep different for you?  Or have you been able to recapture that pre-baby sleep?  If you have, please share your secret.  PLEASE.  You’d be doing a public service.