8:45 pm: i successfully transfer a sleeping baby into her swaddle me in the pack-n-play where she sleeps at night.
9:30 pm: exhausted, since she had been up three times instead of her usual two to eat the night before, i climb into bed myself, relatively confident that i will be able to sleep for several hours before my boobs are needed. she ate at 8, and she pretty reliably sleeps for 5-6 hours after the last feed of the evening... i do the math and figure i'll be hearing from her around 1 or 2.
12 am: i hear the unmistakable sounds of a hungry baby emanating from the pack-n-play next to my side of the bed. i tear myself away from sleep and take her to the glider in her room, nurse her, burp her, put her back to bed. she lies there, awake, and makes lots of noise for about half an hour.
12:45 am: bebe finally falls asleep. i, however, am now thoroughly awake and lie there obsessing over various ongoing concerns. when am i going to make it to the library to do that research i need to do before i give my committee the revised chapter outline for my dissertation which i promised they'd have by the end of september? how are we going to manage a fussy baby at the wedding this weekend? what is that rash on her right cheek? how am i ever going to lose weight when i am HUNGRY ALL THE TIME?
1:30 am: i fall asleep, expecting to hear from beatrix around 3, since she usually goes three hours before needing to eat again after waking up the first time.
2:15 am: bebe starts making noise. what the...? i let her go for a few minutes, confused, because she can't possibly be hungry. but she doesn't quiet down, in fact she starts sounding upset. i pick her up, take her to her room, sit down in the glider, and try to nurse her. it's only at this point that i realize we are dealing with the dreaded "stuffies." the stuffies strike bebe at usually predictable times: first thing in the morning (which for her is around 5 am), and after a very long nap. her tiny nasal passages get congested, she can't breathe (did you know that young babies can only breathe through their noses? i didn't, until i had one of my own), she freaks out, she snorts and gags and chokes. it is so awful to watch. sometimes we are able to calm her down, at which point the stuffies go away on their own, but when that doesn't work i have to squirt saline drops up her nose and then suction them out. which she hates, and i really can't blame her. i quickly resort to this plan of attack, which clears things up. then i realize that we are facing a problem -- if she got the stuffies after only a few hours sleeping, there's a good chance they may return if i put her back down again. shit. i probably should have set up that humidifier i bought last week on the advice of some other moms who have dealt with congestion in new babies.
2:30 am: i go back into our room and wake up josh, because i can't set up the humidifier and hold bebe at the same time. she's relatively calm now, but awake, and i know if i put her down she'll get upset. i ask josh which job he wants, and he says he doesn't care. i hand him the baby -- big mistake. bebe has never seen her father in the middle of the night before (BECAUSE HE DOESN'T HAVE THE BOOBS, THE GODDAMN BOOBS, SO HE GETS TO SLEEP AT NIGHT -- well, usually) and for some reason his arms and voice, usually so comforting, send her into a complete and total meltdown.
2:35 am: in the bathroom, i open up the humidifier i bought at target (it's cute, shaped like a frog), read the instructions, and begin to fill up the water tank.
2:36 am: i discover that the water tank, aka the frog's face, has a hole in it.
2:37 am: i go back into bebe's room, tell josh that the humidifer is broken, ask him what the hell we are going to do now, and take the baby back. we sit down in the glider and she nurses, while i hear josh rummaging around in the other room.
2:45 am: josh comes back in, tells me he covered the hole with duct tape and that the humidifier is working fine now. he goes back to bed. i realize that bebe's diaper is soaked and change it, thoroughly waking her up in the process. we sit back down, i give her a binky, and we rock and rock and rock. and rock and rock. and rock.
3:15 am: bebe is finally asleep, sort of. i put her back in the pack-n-play, where she makes a little noise but quickly grows quiet. i begin obsessing again.
3:45 am: i fall asleep.
4 am: bebe wakes up. are you kidding me? i take her into bed with me, thinking that maybe she'll fall back to sleep. she alternates between being still and silent just long enough for me to fall asleep, and then squirming and kicking and squawking, at which points i stuff the binky back in her mouth and hold it there until she grows quiet and we start the cycle all over again. i am somewhat delirious at this point.
4:45 am: bebe still hasn't fallen back to sleep, and it finally occurs to me to see if she wants to eat. it turns out she is ravenous. i nurse her in bed and then put her back in the pack-n-play. she lies there making noise for about 45 minutes.
5:30 am: bebe and i fall asleep.
6 am: bebe wakes up. crying a little bit (me, i mean, not her), i take her into her room and try to nurse her, but she's not interested. i notice that her diaper is kind of smelly and change her, expecting to find a poop. there's nothing there though -- not, that is, until about 30 seconds after i'm finished putting a clean diaper on. then she poops, looks up at me, grins, and is clearly WIDE AWAKE. i ask her, "are you trying to kill me? do you want me to die of sleep deprivation and then you won't have a mommy and there will be no one to take care of you?" yes, i did, i actually said that. it's a good thing tiny babies can't understand language yet. i bet a lot of them hear things like that from time to time.
6:30 am: it's awful hard to hold a grudge, though. look at this kid!
