I Keep Trying to Learn The Lesson
Sleep deprivation is torture. No, seriously, look it up. It’s one of the most effective means of torment. It reduces your cognitive function, makes you more anxious and irritable, and generally makes you a worse person.
Babies are masters of this means of abuse. They don’t sleep, so you don’t sleep. You both act like jerks because of it. They whine and cry and wrestle. You beg for it to stop, but your brain convinces you it never will.
I took the following picture around 2AM, when the boys were about 10 months old. It was the peak of our insomnia (which lasted until they were three years old, because, yeah, worthwhile things are meant to be difficult, I guess). I was SO MAD at this 10 month old baby! My own flesh and blood!
Luckily I had a moment of mental clarity in what can only be described as an elevated, emotional stupor.
“Take a picture of yourself so you know what a stupid asshole looks like. You’re supposed to be the adult and you’re this irate?”
You can see the humor all over my face.
Fast forward to today: we’ve got four year olds, soon to be five year olds, who go to bed on time every night and sleep by themselves. Our nights are so much easier now. We rarely hear a peep until it’s time to wake up to get ready for work/daycare.
And yesterday it hit me how heartbroken I am because of it.
It’s not that I long for the sleepless nights. I absolutely do not. Too many more of those and my marriage might have ended. I am not a good person or partner without enough rest.
You know what I miss? The struggle of rocking and patting and begging and singing to your child as they fight sleep… and then you hear that first heavy breath and you know they’ve dozed off.
Those tiny arms and legs, tense from wrestling with you as you try to keep them close and stationary, when they release their grasp.
Nolan had a gift of avoiding all of the above. He could convince you he was wide awake quite literally five seconds before you heard him snoring.
Hudson would twirl his hair constantly as a means of staying awake - a nervous tic we share.
No, I don’t miss being woken up every two hours, but I absolutely miss them being close. And what I’ve come to learn is you can’t have one without the other.
We have to teach our children to have independence from us. Unfortunately, independence is a double-edged sword. One we shove in our own gut to protect them and to allow them to grow and thrive.
In the midst of the madness, I would often get irritated when older or more experienced parents would say things like, “it gets better.”
I won’t say it to any parents going through it now.
I’m not convinced it does actually get better.
Because the lesson is it was always great.
That’s all for now,
Tyler