Daddy Brain

As I have mentioned, oh maybe once or twice before, Norah's first year was tough because she was such an awful sleeper. Around the time she was about 9 months or so I began to think I might have a bit of post-partum depression or anxiety. I felt really bad, pretty much all of the time, but it was hard to tell why because I didn't seem to meet any of the criteria for PPD on the pediatrician's forms. See, every month when we went in for a well baby check up there would be a form to fill out where you answered yes or no to a bunch of questions about the baby's development. At the end were 3 or 4 questions for "mom." I always answered "no" to all of the questions, but in retrospect, I don't think they were adequate.

For example, the question was, "do you find yourself crying uncontrollably at times for no reason?" and my answer was always no. If the question had been, "do you regularly want to murder your husband for leaving his dirty coffee cup in the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher?" than the answer would have been yes. The question was, "have you lost interest in the things you used to enjoy?" and the answer was no. But if the question had been, "have you completely forgotten what you used to be interested in because your brain is pretty much mush?" the answer would have been yes. The question was, "do you ever have thoughts of harming yourself or your baby?" My answer was no and hell no. But if the question had been, "do you ever have thoughts of harming your snoring husband or the barista who just ran out of sugar free vanilla syrup?" the answer would have been yes and hell yes. Basically, my point is that the post-baby crazies take on all shapes and sizes and I don't necessarily think the medical profession asks the right questions.

Anyway, I finally went to talk to someone about it, probably about 6 months after I should have, and she helped me to sort through what was normal and what was not. After a bit it became pretty clear that my problem was a lot simpler than anyone realized-I really needed to sleep. For the better part of a year I survived on snippets of sleep-45 minutes here and an hour and a half there, but fundamentally losing out on any kind of meaningful rest. BVZ tried to help but Norah was a tough nut who didn't take a bottle until she was 10 months old and so all feeding duty was on me. Plus, I was a new mom and felt like I was just doing what I was supposed to be doing. I mean, after all, no one said baby was supposed to be easy.

But, once she started sleeping through the night with real consistency everything changed. BVZ and I actually became friends again. I started to function at work. I no longer felt as though I was walking through life in a fog. Towards the end of this pregnancy when my insomnia got so bad again, we immediately recognized where things were headed and put in a plan of action. Bubby was a GODSEND for the month that she was here because I would hand Louis off to her at 5:00 am and then sleep until 10:00 or 11:00. Then I would take a nap with Norah in the afternoon. Ironically, I have been more rested during Louis' first month of life than I was during the entire pregnancy.

BVZ has also been doing his part to make sure that I am sleeping as much as possible and on the weekends takes on all night duties (to be clear, neither of us thinks he is doing me any favors, we both just see it as him doing his part). It takes him a bit of time to wake up and acclimate to what is going on (so I am waking up too because Lou sleeps with us and when he cries I am up instantly, whereas it takes BVZ longer to figure out what it going on), but if I don't have to get up and feed or change him I can immediately go back to sleep. When I do get up and tend to him during the week it is much harder for me to fall back asleep once he's settled down. On the other hand, BVZ is out like a light as soon as Louis is back down.

The point is, so far it is working. It helps a lot that Louis sleeps in 4 to 5 hour blocks right now, which is the polar opposite of his sister at this age. Perhaps his tongue tie was a blessing (for me) in disguise. Whatever the case, we'll take it.

Which brings me to my very, very long winded point. BVZ had gotten up every time on both Friday and Saturday night and on Sunday morning he was pretty tired. He had fixed Norah her breakfast and took her to the park and when they got back I made her some lunch. I asked him if he had given her milk for breakfast and if so what had he done with her cup (we start out with one straw cup at breakfast and then it gets refilled and refrigerated throughout the day-so it should have been in the fridge). He said it was but I couldn't find it so I assumed he had either 1) not actually given her milk for breakfast, or 2) put the cup in the dishwasher or sink and forgotten that we reused it throughout the day. I figured he just wasn't owning up to it but he INSISTED that she had had milk and he had put the cup in the fridge. He said it was the pink cup with the orange top. He actually got kind of agitated about it (which is so not his style), so I searched the entire fridge with no luck. The searching went on and on for several minutes until I assured him we would find it later and I would just get a new cup for now. So, I opened the cabinet and found this:

Dad's getting the night off.