Sleep Deprivation and the New Dad

I still recall my favorite excuse I would use when people would ask why I didn’t have children yet. I would say that I treated my mother so badly as a child that god would punish me by giving me a child that was just like me. Now that I have a little boy, I don’t know if this is so but I am so tired lately that it does feel like some kind of harsh penance.

Last night Logan fussed and fought sleep all night. He would eat, and I would rock him to sleep. I would lay him down and then lay down to get a couple of hours before I needed to get ready for work. Just as I was tickling the fringes of dreamland he would begin that telltale whine. Suddenly the whine would escalate to a wail and I was lifting him out of his crib to start all over again. The frustration is so hard to describe. It’s uncanny.

Many books and articles on parenting try to warn you about the sleep deprivation that you suffer in the first couple of months of parenthood. Actually, most of your friends and family with kids chuckle as they ask “Get any sleep lately?” Unfortunately no one prepared me for the reality of night after night of constantly interrupted sleep. So for the benefit of all potential parents who read this I will use metaphorical language to try to convey what it feels like.

The first analogy that comes to mind is that it feels like you’ve been hit by a bus, but that simile does not do justice to the sheer frustration of being up three quarters of a night trying to calm a fussy child. Personally I use the bus illustration way too often for it to convey the true sense of what I am trying to say. I stub my toe it feels like I’ve been hit by a bus. I get a cold I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. No, the bus analogy is just my catch all quip for the day-to-day stuff that causes me personal anguish. The sleep deprivation needs something more personal; more sinister and less cliché.

The best illustration I could think of is that it feels like being sucker punched in the stomach. I have, unfortunately, been a victim of such an attack and it is very similar to the nausea that sweeps over after an unexpected blow to the belly. It is that sick feeling that envelopes you when you know you have to start getting for work in the next half hour and you haven’t had a stitch of sleep. Then you wonder to yourself how in god’s name will you function. It ain’t fun.

After a few sleepless nights you cease thinking like a rational human. I found myself on more than one occasion holding my little boy up to my face and in as piteous a voice as you could imagine asking him “What do you want? What on god’s green earth will stop you from crying?” And he would look at me with sympathetic and yet simultaneously accusatory stare and reply, “WAH.” Then I could only laugh semi-hysterically at the sheer absurdity of expecting more of an answer from an infant. You begin to convince yourself that your child is miserable and that you are the world’s worst parent.

The truth of the matter is that our child has colic. “Colic” is the catch all description for when you find yourself having to comfort an infant for more than 3 hours a day 3 or more days of a week. Our bundle of joy required much more than 3 hours of comforting a day. The energy required to dispense this comfort is much more than you could imagine. You will find that some people will advise you to “sleep when the baby sleeps” in our case the baby never slept unless mommy or daddy were holding him close and bouncing about the house while shushing in his ear simultaneously. The exhaustion that results is incomparable to anything I have experienced before.

There you have it. In a nutshell there is nothing that can prepare you for a colicky kid. Funny thing is that the day after I was inspired to write this diatribe on sleeplessness my dear son Logan slept through the night. As he neared the 12 week mark he became less fussy and needed less comforting. Now we can actually put him down and he will sit quietly still for a good long time without needing constant attention. He has become fascinated by his mobile will lay in his crib quietly watching it turn and listening to the “Winnie the Pooh” theme as a plays again and again. His accusatory stare has become a quirky half smile and the occasional coo. Then the other day, wonders of wonders, his mother made him laugh.

Looking back, I guess those sleepless nights don’t seem nearly as bad as I made it sound earlier.

I guess I was just making a mountain out of a molehill. It sure did seem like a huge molehill at the time.