My daughter is five months, one week and three days old and last night I dug deep into some pocket of reserves I didn't know I had.
On the fourth night that my daughter was alive, my mother and I alternated sitting awake with the baby downstairs, the baby that refused to settle with our weak, loose swaddle. We both feared that the fabric would come loose, cover the baby, we were emotional, sleep deprived and misguidedly vigilant. The baby, feeding off our nervous energy, my mom, who had raised three children was shaking off the cobwebs of knowledge of newborns, now thirty-five years after her last child was an infant. And I hadn't slept more than ninety minutes since the moment my water broke. In the middle of the night, during my watch, I googled "night doulas" and sent desperate emails at 3:42 a.m. in search of help RIGHT THIS MINUTE. I awoke shattered, unable to function. My husband suggested a drive to his sister's, knowing that this mother of two would understand and help me somehow. We sat for lunch, the baby sleeping in the carseat in the other room. I was afraid to leave her out of my sight. "How are you?" was the question. I sat at the kitchen table with my six year old niece to my left and my three year old nephew across from me and started crying. My niece looked up, eyes wide, afraid. I'd never done anything but smile around her. "Have you ever been so tired you started crying?," I asked her. "That's what's happening now. I'm fine. I'm happy. I'm just really, really tired," I smiled through my tears. My baby gave me a five hour stretch of sleep that night and I felt like a new woman.
But the need to have a second wind kept coming, like every ninety minutes, for seven weeks. My baby was healthy, happy and a newborn. A newborn who needed to eat every ninety minutes. No matter what. I didn't know what months of broken sleep, never a chance to "catch up" can do. I had no idea I could somehow stay awake, rocking my daughter in her muslin swaddle in the wee hours. My mother would send me to bed at 8 p.m. to try and get a head start on sleep, an extra hour or two. I savoured each and every minute of that rest.
Last night I dug in deep again. My daughter is an average sleeper for five months. There are better and there are worse. I know I can function on seven hours of broken sleep and not be driven to eat too many frozen cookie dough bites. But when my daughter had the onset of her first cold and fever, on the night before my husband flew out to LA for business and I had a major presentation at work, when she awoke screaming at midnight and again at four a.m., when each time she needed me to calm her, rock her and hold her upright because the clogged nose scared her, led her to her cries, I rocked her. Back and forth from midnight to one-thirty. Back and forth from four to five twenty-two. her head on my shoulder, curled up like a newborn, held close by me, as I wanted my baby to feel calm and rested. I want her well. I was her mother, digging in and finding that elusive "second wind".
