Most workplaces have at least one person walking around like a tranquilized zombie, drooling on the photocopier and slowly bumping into unsuspecting co-workers.
But enough about the Senate. What I want to talk about are new parents, and the way that their lives are drastically changed by lack of sleep. It can be difficult to understand what is going on with a new parent if you’ve never been one yourself, or even if you have kids of your own but they are a bit older – parents think that they’ll remember every tiny detail, every coo and giggle, when in fact in the sleep-deprived state of parenthood most of those memories just bounce off the brain, slide out the ear and land on the floor right next to a pile of week-old barf.
With children aged five and three I thought I was finished with the hard-core sleep deprivation stage of life until just this morning I was startled awake at 3:30 a.m. by my younger son’s face hovering inches above mine.
“Daddy,” he said. “Poop.”
The struggle is real, my friends. In an effort to foster better understanding of these poor creatures I’ve waded through my own foggy memories to recall details of what it’s been like so far.
Phase 1: Newborns
All the baby books tell you the same thing: newborns sleep all the time, like close to 20 to 22 hours per day. And by “all the time” they of course mean “never.”
When my kids were tiny it fell to me to be the “closer” who could finally get them to sleep after a long bout of important screaming. To do this, often at 1 a.m., I’d walk back and forth from one end of our house to the other while the child did his best to cry loud enough to ensure that the good people of Hawaii still knew he was awake. I walked so much that I should have just installed a giant hamster wheel generator in our hallway and then I could have supplied power for the entire Western seaboard.
The walks always ended with a game that any parent could describe in incredible detail. Unless, of course, that parent has already bashed themselves to death with a baby rattle. The game is called “try to put an allegedly sleeping baby into the crib without it waking up.”
It goes like this: you do your magic to the point where you think the baby is fast asleep. Then you wait five extra minutes just to be safe, then you try to lay the baby into the crib as gently as if it was a nuclear bomb triggered by any application of force greater than an amoeba sneeze. Then as soon as the baby touches the mattress it explodes.
Then you try the whole process again, this time waiting an extra 10 minutes to make sure the baby is really asleep. Then, “waaaaaa!”
This process is repeated over and over, sometimes for days. Right now there is a father in some remote Northern Saskatchewan cabin who has been trying to put his almost sleeping baby into the crib since 1997.
These are the things parents of newborns must deal with every hour of every day, so please take pity on them at work. And they should only be allowed to do the simplest of tasks like dusting the plants or running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Phase 2: Sleep training
New parents are adorable – they convince themselves that their child has all kinds of unique sleeping codes that only they can unlock.
“My baby only naps in the car. My baby only falls asleep in my arms. My baby only goes to sleep while watching quiet, non-threatening things on TV, like a Vancouver Canucks power play.”
Most parents eventually admit that they can’t live like this forever and so they figure out some form of sleep training, although there are a few parents who don’t realize how far they’ve gone to avoid real sleep training until they wake up in a hospital room with a slipped disc one night after rocking their 24-year-old son to sleep.
There are many types of sleep training. The one my wife and I used involved everyone in the house crying for an hour until we all fell asleep except for the baby. Sleep training does work though, and by the time my second child came around I was much better prepared to handle the anguish and trauma of listening to your little one scream out during those first few agonizing days of sleep training and … hey, the Jays game is on!
As long as parents stick to their guns they should be able to muster anywhere up to three hours of sleep per night for themselves, and therefore be trusted at their day jobs to use simple tools such as butter knives and iPhone 4s.
Phase 3: Big boy beds
This is the phase we’ve just entered with our youngest son, one that involves another fun game known as “spend six hours putting your child back into bed every 10 seconds.” My wife, who does not f--- around when it comes to sleep training, has on several occasions rebuilt an entire crib just to show our kids what happens when they don’t stay in bed.
Anyway, in my family we’re nearing the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe that’s just my kid stealing my phone at 2 a.m. again. Regardless, I have learned that we must have pity on the new parents. And please, can someone check on that guy in Saskatchewan? You can reach him on his iPhone 4.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
What are your thoughts? Send us a letter via email by clicking here or post a comment below.
