Month 18: Sleeping Like a Baby

So are you all enjoying the effects of daylight savings time like I am? Miles woke up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday. It was dark and cold and there was nothing on TV except infomercials. Also, we were out of coffee. Fun! As one mom at the playground this morning put it, the person who came up with daylight savings time clearly did not have kids.

Which leads me to my topic of the day: sleep. Or the lack thereof. Who’s getting it, who’s not, when, where, and how often becomes a HUGE topic when you’re a parent. When Miles was born, I was devastated to discover that I, a lifelong champion nighttime sleeper, was not capable of napping during the day. So during my many, many waking hours, I would chart his sleep habits in a little notebook. I think I was hoping for a predictable pattern. Or maybe I was just insane from lack of sleep.

Anyway, charts and graphs made no damn difference. He still will take a random three-hour nap one day for no apparent reason, and the next day -- even though he got up at 5 a.m. – he’ll only sleep for an hour. I would have been better off spending my time thinking up entries for my Sleep Glossary. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Sleep debt: When your spouse owes you a period of uninterrupted sleep in exchange for you getting up with the baby in the middle of the night.

Sleep fib: 1) When you lie to other people about how long your baby’s been sleeping through the night (Note: It doesn’t make you seem like a better parent, it just makes other, more sleep-deprived parents want to kill you.); 2) When you pretend you’re sleeping so your spouse has to go tend to the baby.

Sleep peep: When you or your over-anxious mother wants to go into the sleeping baby’s room “just to check on him.” Don’t do it. Leave well enough alone.

Sleep situation: When the baby falls asleep in the car and you can’t decide whether to risk transferring him to the crib or stay in the car until he wakes up.

Sleep slut: Someone who will sleep anytime, anywhere they get the chance -- even if it means skipping church, sleeping on a bed with no sheets, or sleeping in when it’s their spouse’s turn.

Sleep splurge: When you sleep for obscene lengths of time when someone else is taking care of the baby.

TIP O’ THE WEEK: Anybody got one? We tried gradually pushing back Miles’ bedtime over a few days before the clocks changed, and you can see how that worked out for us. I dread the day we take a trip across time zones.