Sleep Deprivation

Everyone knows parents of new babies don’t get much sleep. You can spot new parents a mile away from the bags under their eyes and the lost look on their faces. Go to any Target at 9 p.m. and you’ll see the new parents swaying back and forth in the checkout line.

Our experience with baby sleep has been pretty typical. Lucy thinks daytime is nighttime and nighttime is daytime. From about 7 p.m. to 3 in the morning she screams for pretty much no reason. If she’s not screaming, then she’s grunting and squirming and writhing with the painful look of a person who is being tortured by terrorists. If you were just looking at her face and not the rest of her body, you’d think we were slowing cutting off all of her cute little toes. Oh, the screaming, the screaming!

The other problem is that Lucy does not like to sleep on anything that does not have a heartbeat. She absolutely despises the crib, bassinet and pack-n-play. Sometimes we can get her to dose off in the swing for about 20 minutes, but that’s about it. She’ll fall asleep nursing and then the second you set her down she awakes as if to say, “Um, excuse me, I need to be held. PLEASE! NOW!” And then the screaming commenses.

Last night we decided to take real action. And after a midnight phone conversation with my sister, who puts all of my problems in perspective because she experienced them too, except times THREE, Lucy finally slept. In her crib. For almost FOUR HOURS! Yes, it may be a fluke. But right now she is napping in her bassinet and I actually have time to write on this site. So let’s hope it is a fluke that will last longer than a day.