I do believe we’ve left the “no-sleep” section of our parenting experience, and we’ve now upgraded to “limited sleep”, which is incredible. I had previously gone without sleep (24+ hours) only a couple times in my life, and I’m glad that hopefully I won’t have to do it again for a very long time.
Everyone is doing well. We’re growing like crazy, adding inches and pounds right and left. We’re now longer than our friend’s daughter who has a four month head-start. We’ve also started making sounds other than “wake the dead screaming”, which is nice. Now we coo and burble and smile (and not just because of gas). We’re sleeping through most of the night and can go at least four hours between feedings, which is awesome for Mom, who was beginning to feel like a bit of a milk delivery truck with a night route. We can’t quite go 9-5 yet, but we’re getting there. 9pm-3am still gets us a couple good hours of sleep.
Now I understand why new parents seemingly disappear off the grid for a while. It’s not because they’re being anti-social, or germaphobes, no it’s because when the kiddo goes to sleep at 9pm, you had damn well better go to sleep too. It’s the only chance you have of getting any good sleep at all. If you kept your normal “young married” schedule from when you didn’t have kids, you’d be going to bed at least a couple hours later. Sleeping from 12-3 is only going to get you so far. Going to bed at 9 at least helps you catch up a little.
So, if you know people with new babies and wonder why they don’t want to see a midnight movie with you, there’s your reason.
Your free time is also completely destroyed, which depending on how attached you were to your hobbies, can be a bit of a shock. I for one, haven’t touched my xbox in six weeks. I’ve also canceled Netflix, I had the same two disks for 8 weeks. I know that all those things will come back again, but I can’t really imagine sitting down and playing 6+ hours of Battlefield on Wednesday nights any more. Part of me is really sad about that. Another part of me realizes that being with my child and being a positive influence in their life is far better than wrecking some poor noob. Plus, I can always teach the kiddo to play games later, and then we can wreak havoc together. Which was always my plan. I had a kid so I’d have someone to play co-op with…
That was a joke.
Sorta.
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