No sleep?


This is Sean...

One of the most common things I have heard when I tell people that Rachel and I are expecting a baby (due by the way, two days ago--yep the due date has passed) is about sleep "Oh, you should get sleep now, because there's no sleep later!" We are definitely fearing and trying to prepare for this, but all the build up of hearing that led me to wondering in my own head: For how long am I not going to sleep? A week, a month, a year? My fears were becoming apocalyptic, what's next, the plague? How long, O God?!?

So one day in our birth relationship class (also known as "how not to get divorced class," coined by Rachel) I asked this: so how long am I not going to sleep for? Somehow it was a relief to hear the length of time with no sleep described in weeks, and while I know that's going to be more difficult than I can imagine, weeks without sleep definitely moved my fears from thinking about Egypt and plagues down to the ok, finals weeks over and over again, I can live through that.

So in all of this, Rachel and I are grateful that our good friends, our family, and our midwives haven't made us more afraid--and that somewhat ironically hearing that we would struggle to sleep more than 2 hours at a time for a few weeks was reducing my fears (of not sleeping for months, a year?) and even making us less afraid then, too. Even though I'm not excited for that not sleeping part, I do want to experience it, not to wish it away--seems like just part of being a parent with stories to tell and ears to listen to others.

Comments

  1. This is obviously on a totally different level, but hearing this reminds me of this time last year: everyone kept telling me about how the first year of the PhD was the hardest, and I'd be so miserable, but things would improve later -- and this before classes even started! I got really annoyed eventually -- when I'm in the thick of it, tell me then that this is the worst it gets, but don't terrify me beforehand about it when there is nothing I can do!

    Glad to hear you have a more reasonable timeline than you'd worried. You're all in my heart.

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  2. Hi Sean! This is Rachel's friend from HS, Emily. My husband and I just had our first child on July 7th--and we're already getting some sleep :D

    When I was pregnant, I kept really getting annoyed at all the people telling me to 'sleep while I could,' as I couldn't get comfortable quite often. I'm not going to say that I lost more sleep in the third trimester than I did the first few weeks of his arrival, but...I guess what I'm trying to say is that that portion was good preparation, and that people really shouldn't say that the third trimester is a time to catch up on sleep because that doesn't work!

    There are nights that stink, but even in the middle of it all, it's mostly measured in nights, not weeks (though the exhaustion still persists some).

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