Just a thought...

Today I realized that new parents (or at least, this new parent) can sometimes be some of the easiest people in the world to please while at other times we’re impossible to make happy. Take today for an example:

Julia woke up at 5:30 this morning wanting to eat. Not my favorite hour of the day, but I can’t let the baby go hungry. By 6:15 she was changed, fed to her satisfaction, and burped. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to get her to go back to sleep. By 7:00 I was convinced that she was in a deep enough sleep that she would stay asleep when I put her down. I put her in the bassinet without the tiniest squirm on her part and went back to bed myself (hurray!). At 7:35 she was giving the “somebody please hold me” cry. I gave her a few minutes to see if she would fall back asleep. Nope. Was lying in bed for 30 minutes really worth it? Maybe I should have stayed up. Julia fell back asleep in my arms as soon as I picked her up. I took her downstairs, propped some pillows behind my head and slept sitting up on the couch (hurray!) Hey, it may be the only nap I get all day.

Chloe woke up a little later in the morning, crabby as can be. I could tell it was going to be a rough day with her. Immediately I started making plans for having an early lunch and putting her to nap right after we ate instead of her normal 2:00 naptime. I was able to make some coffee without having to hold Julia (hurray!- something to help with my awful headache). But as soon as the coffee was made and poured into my cup, Julia woke up needing fed again. So much for attending to the headache right away. When Kevin left for his office hours in Belle, Chloe was screaming because she wanted to go with him and Julia was screaming because she didn’t start eating the second she woke up. I looked at Kevin and asked him if he would stay home if I cried too. I never got a response. By the way, my cup of coffee was finally finished by 12:30, after having to reheat it on two separate occasions.

Julia was awake from 10:00 until 12:30 this morning. That was quite exciting since she slept almost all day yesterday. Hopefully she’ll sleep well tonight now. By 12:00 she was showing signs of fatigue, so I tried to help her fall asleep. She was asleep at one point, but woke up 3 minutes after I put her down. She finally fell asleep for good around 12:45. Chloe was acting much better by this point, but I still decided to put her down for nap early so they would both be sleeping at the same time.

I used the time to take a much needed shower (hurray!). Julia slept in her bouncy seat in the bathroom, soothed by the sound of the water. That worked really well until I opened the bathroom door and the steam left while the cool air came in. That woke her up in a hurry. There’s no way a nap less than 30 minutes long was going to be enough for her, so here I sit rocking the bouncy seat with my leg while she goes back to sleep. Why doesn’t she want to sleep today?

The smallest things can make me so happy right now -- catching an unexpected nap, having a cup of caffeine (that’s the only reason to drink the coffee), taking a shower, having a newborn who is actually awake for a fair period of time during the day. Then it’s amazing to me how quickly the pleasure can be taken away -- waking up to the sound of a screaming toddler, drinking cold coffee many hours after it’s needed, trying desperately to put Julia to sleep during the day after trying so hard to make her wake up yesterday. If I weren’t so sleep-deprived I would probably find these scenarios quite humorous. I must be making some kind of progress -- they didn’t bring me to tears.