Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Free Birth Control

After Brandt was born I had the brilliant idea (a result of much sleep deprivation) of inviting teen aged girls over to my house so they could see what having a newborn is really like ... as a way of deterring them from getting pregnant until they were 30. I also had a very important question that no one could seem to answer for me: Why do people have more than one child?

I was miserable during those first few weeks because I was not sleeping and I had so much postpartum anxiety that even when Brandt was sleeping, I couldn't sleep. Whoever coined the phrase, "sleep when the baby sleeps" must have been a man.

So the free birth control plan was a way for girls to know just how un-fun caring for a newborn actually is. Then Brandt grew out of the waking every 2-3 hours and we all started sleeping through the night ... when he was 6 months old. But still, we've been sleeping perfectly for a year and a half and I slowly began to understand why people have more than one child ... because they are amazing and fun and adorable (most of the time).

This all changed Christmas Eve 2008. Things started going south and have yet to get better. Brandt had been waking up during the night and we have the hardest time getting him back to sleep. He wanders out of bed and comes into our room. We bring him back. This goes on for about an hour. Then last night it happened twice ... once from 12 - 1am and then again from 2:45am - 3:30am, at which point I decided to bring my pillow and blanket into his room and lay next to his bed so I could try to get some sort of sleep. This didn't work, by the way. Brandt kept tossing and turning and rustling around. I'm sure he slept a little, but all I got out of the situation was a stiff neck and no sleep. And out of desperation I even tried to bring him into our bed to sleep (even though I'm completely opposed to co-sleeping) but he won't sleep when he's in bed with us.

So I am once again considering my free birth control plan. If you know anyone who could benefit from learning the realities of caring for babies/toddlers, feel free to send them my way. I'll let them get up with my son during the night.

I told Joe I wanted to call in sick this morning. Oh wait ...

3 comments:

Colleen said...

It's New Year's Eve, slip him a cocktail, that will be sure to knock him out for the evening!

DON'T REPORT ME TO CPS people, I am just kidding! However, I am not opposed to a little Benadryl every now and again, certainly he has a little snot somewhere that you could blame the usage on!

Anonymous said...

I keep thinking of the person you know who gets to call in sick to work and then take her kid to daycare since she's paying for it anyway. That sounds like a dream....

Karen said...

Yeah, I know ... wouldn't that be nice to have the option of actually getting a whole day to yourself, even if you are sick?