No Nap For You

Tomorrow I'm going to the lake with Jack. It'll be a week away from the Dude and I'm a little apprehensive about it. My Father-in-law is coming to get me late in the morning, less than 24 hours from now, and I still need to pack a suitcase and wash the cloth diapers. And here I am on the Internet.

Jack was off-schedule today. It's not a hard and fast thing that needs to be adhered to, but it's an excellent guideline as to what he should be doing, whether he needs to eat and his naps are predictable.

The Dude (Who'd kept me up all night with his flailing limbs), whose heart was in the right place, took him out of his bassinet early, then tried to put him down for a nap early, back in the bassinet with me beside him. This resulted in crying. He also didn't change the baby first, which is a must. So, back up they went to the living room for another hour. Of course I was wide awake from all the noise and had to lull myself back to sleep, which took an hour. At which point they were back down for Jack's nap.

I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. The Dude took the crying Jack back up, presumably to nap in the living room, which he does from time to time. I came up an hour later, having slept maybe 10 minutes, only to discover the baby was still awake, meaning he'd up been for four straight hours. Four hours may as well be forever.

It really is amazing the sort of things you learn by being home with a baby. Getting them to sleep reliably is the most important thing. Getting them fed and changed is easy enough, but sleep? No screwing around. It's gotta happen and there's a window of time it has to happen in otherwise you're all in for a world of suffering.

Keeping Jack up because he was overtired and not sleeping would never have occurred to me and I had to fight off some resentment of the Dude for making such a critical error. It's not like he's had the experience with him that I've had. I took Jack in hand and rocked his cranky ass to sleep. He fought the sleep, but the sleep won, as it always does eventually. However, the rest of the day has now been shot as we now must get him caught up so he'll sleep properly tonight. Getting a three-month-old baby to nap every hour is hard going.

So now I have this to-do list that's not been touched and I don't dare traipse into the bedroom to start. Jack's sleeping and, god willing, he'll go another half an hour. It's so amazing how entirely a baby can dictate your day with something as basic as sleep, and how quickly your day can fall apart over said sleep.

As for me, I wish I'd caught some Zs myself. It's kind of bitter trying to make a baby nap when you'd give your left ear for a nap, yourself.