Bought the Ticket. Taking the Ride.

Pardon the bad picture, it was taken with my phone yesterday evening. I'm pretty sure it was Patrick's first real smile and I wanted to capture it, especially since he hasn't had much to smile about since. This will be a good reminder for those nights (tonight?) when he's been fussing for hours and I'm at the end of my rope. Patrick has been smiling off and on for weeks, but it was those little random baby smiles that appear out of nowhere (sometimes when he's sleeping) and disappear just as quickly. This time, he actually smiled in response to something I did and it lasted for a good minute or two. Until I tried to take a picture of him, of course.

It's been a rough few days of little sleep (for me) and a lot of crying (for him, though I feel like I could cry). Monday and Tuesday were lovely, but it's been downhill since then-- some bad nights with short periods of sleep and a lot of fussiness and crying and seemingly endless hunger and parts of the day that aren't so great, either. He seems to have gas after he eats, but I've done every trick in the book to help him with that and still he cries. Another growth spurt? He's gaining weight at a pretty good clip, but I just don't know. He still wanted to eat last night even after he ate three times in less than 6 hours. He sucked on his fingers, but kept losing them in his flailing, so I gave him my finger and he sucked on it for nearly an hour before falling asleep. Maybe he needs a pacifier? I'm afraid to even say the scary word colic because if this goes on for weeks or months I will lose my mind. More than one person has told me that babies cry more in the 3 to 6 week period (or 4 to 8 week period, the anecdotes seem to vary), but no one said why. Just that it does get better. I'm a fix-it girl and I don't know the fix for this except to wait it out, I guess.

Strangely enough, after fussing and crying for over 5 hours last night, he slept from 1:30 until almost 8:30. That's almost seven hours after two nights of not sleeping longer than two hours and never having slept longer than four and a half. I didn't sleep anywhere near that long, of course. It took me at least an hour to unwind (listening to a baby cry is stressful and I have a low tolerance for noise), then the dog woke me up at 6 and then I was freaked out that Patrick hadn't woken up, so I had to check on him. He was fine, so I went back to bed and did get about another hour of sleep before he started making wake up noises (and I honestly think he would soothed himself back to sleep if I hadn't gone in to get him). There's a part of me that wonders if he did wake up in the middle of the night and I was just too exhausted to hear him and that makes me feel impossibly guilty. How would I know? He didn't seem any more hungry than usual this morning. I figured he was just worn out from the past couple of bad nights.

When you have a baby, his bad days are your bad days, so I'm a bit of an incoherent zombie today. I did get a bunch of stuff done around the house yesterday because his late morning and afternoon naps were peaceful (if short). I was running on some magical reserve tank of energy that I don't want to examine too closely for fear it will fail me when I need it. Despite the previous bad night's sleep, I felt pretty good and positive about the day until around 6 PM when the cycle of fussing, feeding, crying, soothing, fussing started again. (Which was, coincidentally enough, about 20 minutes after the above picture was taken.) I guess that's something, though. A few good hours in the midst of the chaos. And, despite how tired I feel now, I did actually get about five hours of sleep last night followed by another good hour, so that's about twice as much as I've been averaging. I suspect it's depression and not fatigue that's making me feel tired today, since I don't know how the rest of the day and night are going to go. I'll rally, though. I always do.

I'm looking forward to that mysterious time frame known as "it will get better." Hopefully sooner, rather than later. I was spoiled for those two weeks when Jay was home and I was getting a stretch of sleep every night. I even got used to the 2-3 hours between feedings of the past couple of weeks (punctuated by a couple of very bad nights). Can't I have those back, at least? (Yes, I'm whining.)

I'm not complaining, truly. Okay, I am, but I don't mean to. I'd love to write about something else and as soon as my brain isn't foggy and I can think of something else, I will write about it. I know it could be worse (that dreaded colic-- I've heard anecdotes of it lasting nearly around the clock for weeks) and I'm grateful for these little stretches during the day where I do get a few things done and manage to feel somewhat human, if an incoherent human. And I have that little smile above to remind me that it isn't all crying and fussing, even if it seems like it sometimes.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about my blog post title, Alison Tyler has a post today titled "Buy the ticket. Take the ride." It has nothing to do with babies and sleep, but it seems to fit my situation. I signed up for this and I even knew what I was in for (minus the absent spouse, the Cesarean section recovery and the inability to resolve every bout of crying), so I can't complain now. Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Yeah.

It's a hell of a ride, I'll tell you that.

No Rest for the Wicked (or Me)

I want to blog, but I find myself staring at a blank screen with not a single coherent thought in my head. All I can think about is sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

Patrick is, in fact, sleeping and I should probably try to lay down and sleep a bit, too. But I know he will be awake again in less than 2 hours, probably less than an hour, and that just isn't enough time for my insomnia to let me fall asleep. Plus, I'm downstairs on the couch and he's in his little rocker next to me and that's all fine and well for his napping, but I have a hard time sleeping on the couch and prefer to be in bed. But going to bed entails turning off the lights and television, covering the bird's cage, letting the dog out, carrying Patrick upstairs to his crib so I can hear him when he wakes up, taking my laptop, cell phone, a glass of water for me and a bottle for Patrick upstairs, brushing my teeth, washing my face and taking my meds. And probably doing two or three other things along the way. All of which will take close to an hour, at which time Patrick will be awake again. So sleep is but a wishful dream on the horizon because I'm too damned tired at this moment to do everything I need to do to actually go to sleep.

I'm not alone, though. Mary Anne blogged about being tired this morning. She has a new baby and a toddler, so I weep for her. Of course, she also has a partner and child care, so perhaps she should weep for me. I suspect we are both too tired to waste tears for each other when we can simply weep for ourselves. But I'll quote this part in place of offering anything creative or new or interesting of my own. Because, dear readers, I'm simply too tired to be original:

People keep asking me how I'm doing, especially this week as I see lots of old friends in concentrated doses. And I say terrible and they laugh uncomfortably and I say no really the last six months have been pretty much sheer hell and they say but at least your children are adorable and I admit that this is true but how is that relevant? Cute and hell are not measured on the same axis. My children, you are overflowing with cuteness, your adorability quotient is sky-high, especially when dressed in the little butterfly and alligator outfits that aunty and grandma got you for Christmas but that has absolutely nothing to do with the hellishness. Which also has nothing to do with your personalities, I must note, which are, as children's personalities go, pretty good. (Oh look, my commas have come back, how I love, them.) It is really all about the sleep, or lack, thereof. Comma, stop.

I know new parents are supposed to complain about lack of sleep and we are all supposed to nod and smile and change the subject because that is the social contract but this is truly maddening. I read an article although probably it was just a summary of an article now that I think about it because I can't remember the last time I had the time to just read an article for fun but anyway I read an article about how new parents and interns on call had similar sleep patterns -- being woken up at unpredictable intervals far too often and for far too long. The article said the human brain was not well suited to handle that kind of unpredictability and given that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to put patients' lives and fragile babies into the hands of those who are being slowly driven mad by the interrupted and inadequate sleep. Which all makes total sense to me but doesn't appear to be stopping this from happening.

Now I will begin the slow process of making my way to bed-- hopefully by midnight or 1 AM, depending on how long it takes for sweet, drowsy Patrick to eat when he wakes again shortly-- for my two (maybe two and a half) hours of sleep before he wakes yet again. Tomorrow when someone asks me how I'm doing I will say I'm tired (I don't say terrible because I figure it could always be worse) as I have said every day since he was born (and before, since pregnancy was also exhausting, but in an entirely different way) and I will try very hard not to think about how much actual sleep I got because that only makes me more tired. And I will be grateful that Patrick is a good, sweet, cute, easy baby, even if I'm so tired that I sometimes forget his name.