All these books out there, that tell you how to get your baby on a sleep schedule are GREAT and all - but where is the book that tells you how to survive while your figuring that schedule out? I can't find the part in the manuals about how its okay and completely normal and natural to fight the urge on a daily basis not to fling your little swaddled parasite across the room (parasite: an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment. I'm not trying to be ugly. It is what it is.)
I love my baby - but mainly just during the day. Honestly? Hate it (it becomes an 'it'), during the night. The night is my hell - the time when the fact that I have not slept for more than an hour straight in the last month becomes intolerable. It is the time where my patience has completely left the building and Oban is at his neediest. How convenient for us. Every night is a different game, and almost every night he wins. I sit in the dark in my king-sized bed and I cry with him. Usually after I have not-so-gently tossed him onto his Boppy pillow while thinking to myself 'cry-it-out mofo'. It's either that or I feel the magnetic pull of shaken baby syndrome - and considering my brother just informed me that my 6 year old nephew recently made a donation at his school to the Shaken Baby Syndrome Fund - I really can't go there. But I get it. I sooooooooo get it.
So people don't discuss this and I feel like it needs to be discussed. I'd like to see whole books (sitcoms, magazines, OPRAH!) dedicated to all the darkside thoughts a parent has for their newborn child. A sort of 'Post Secret' just for parents. Because when I casually mention the urge to leave him by the curb - people kind of chuckle nervously - and dude, seriously - I am FOR REAL. And not for real in a way that I'm sending out a call for help - fortunately I have a husband who can intercept before I get to the shaken baby bit - but for real in a way that I need that darkness validated because it is a really SHITTY ASS FEELING. And when you are a first time mom, there are enough shitty ass feelings to sift through, the last thing you need is to feel homicidal.
So please, lets start here. I'm all about the healing. Tell me about the time you almost lost your shit. Or hell, tell me about the time you DID lose your shit. Tell me you've squeezed too hard - or tossed, or shaken, or 'set down' a bit more aggressively than perhaps was necessary only to have your miserable parasite suddenly stop screaming and look at you like 'Dude. What is YOUR PROBLEM?'. Tell me you've used four-letter-words. Tell me you let him/her cry-it-out so that he/she could LIVE to be miserable tomorrow. (despite that every book has cautioned that allowing your 4wk old to do so will turn them into needy anxious human beings requiring years of therapy).
The anger and frustration of soothing a baby who has already been fed/changed/ and you are on your third round of getting it to sleep in your arms only to set it down and it go APESHIT 2 minutes later is no joke. It makes you feel helpless and hopeless, and dread all the days ahead of you - all with the depressing awareness that YOU WANTED THIS. This family business. You actually spent LOTS OF MONEY and you swallowed 50+ pills a day of nasty ass chinese herbs for 5 months for this. Hell, you had a UNMEDICATED BIRTH - BY CHOICE!! The craziness!! So there you are. Desperate to find that book. The Happiest Mommy on the Block book. The How to Swaddle Your Wife book.
Cuz you know what? I've had 3, (3!) cups of very caffeinated coffee this morning and I've got my eyes set on a full bag of Dove Dark Chocolate with Almonds for lunch - and I don't give a shit. Tonight I will have a glass of white wine around 9pm while he is sleeping the only uninterrupted stretch of sleep he seems interested in these days - and I will go back into the cave of hell and emerge again all the same. Only maybe tomorrow I'll get to read about everyone elses Cave o' Hell and feel a little more hopeful that I will survive this. And so will he.
