Getting Sleepy Now

As a Canadian the number one topic of conversation is the weather, as a parent the topic of sleep or perhaps more accurately, the lack of sleep has to be in the top 5!

I came into parenthood a little later in life than many…in my early 40’s. For many of those 40 plus years I enjoyed sound fitful sleep, rarely interrupted, rarely less than a solid 7-8 hours. And in all honesty I have to admit wondering what all the fuss was about when those other people (parents) complained about sleep issues…Suck it up folks! Well yes indeed payback is a bitch… now I’m the one complaining and getting those looks of disbelief from the "parents to be".

Folklore suggests that mothers are programmed to forget the worst of the childbearing process, otherwise no woman would ever have a second child and the human species would have long become extinct. Having been in the delivery room and witnessed what my wife went through I strongly suspect there may be some truth to that theory.

Now let’s take the theory one step further…do parents forget the worst of the early parenting experience as well…for the sake of the future of the species? Or is it just all the sleep deprivation that has caused memory loss?

I do remember enough… especially about the massive changes to sleep patterns to say it’s worth a conversation. But is there really a solution? I have my doubts.

In my particular case we had an infant that went through an extended phase where only daddy could put him in his crib without a meltdown. This was a difficult time and the impact on me and those around me was serious. I can't remember a time where I had to "drag my ass" in so many ways. I really don't know how I made it through some of those days at work, and god bless my coworkers for tolerating my less than exemplary work on some days. For me the first thing to go when exhaustion sets in is my patience. After multiple days it can get down right ugly. A friend of mine, also a parent, shared his valuable experience that just when you think you've reached the very end of your rope...it gives just a little more. Thankfully he was right. There were some dark days and in hindsight I wish I had handled somethings differently..but don't know if that was even a possibility.

My son is only 5 but has now been sleeping through the night for quite some time, and that dark period of months of sleepless nights, seems at times, like it was a lifetime ago. But it changed me, probably forever.

I was out last night for a rare "guys night out" with a friend. He's my age, with a teenage daughter. At dinner we laughed over our now ever conscious choice to avoid caffeine and of course the topic of "sleep" was discussed. He shattered my illusion that my sleep would return to those days before child. He too went from the sound sleeper to the light sleeper, up at least once a night often more... Funny I don 't remember reading this in any of those parenting books before we got pregnant...

And what inspired this post? I had an absolutely horrendous sleep last night...