Too Good To Be True

I knew that I spoke too soon when I celebrated my amazing night of sleep on Monday night.  Because on Tuesday night, as payback, I got less than 2 hours of sleep.  The shining light is that I was well rested enough from the night before that I didn't totally loose it for a second time.

Sleep deprivation is a crazy thing.  Sometime around 4 a.m. last night crazy things started happening.  I was freezing cold, even though it wasn't that cold in the house at all.  My entire body felt like it was suffering from restless leg syndrome, and as I sat there in the rocker holding EH I was worried that I would twitch so violently that I would fling him right out of my arms.  Around 5:30 a.m. I started feeling sick to my stomach, as if I was going to throw up, which I attribute to the fact that I was fairly starving since I was awake for a significant amount of time without calories.

And now I'm sitting here at my computer at 10:30 p.m., listening to EH fussing on the monitor, holding my breath that he'll wear himself out and fall asleep.

 This is what he looks like when he sleeps... not that I get to see this scene very often

Last Friday a friend of mine from graduate school sent me the nicest email.  Among many other things, she said that when her son was a newborn someone told her "This is the hardest part." 

This is the hardest part.  

I like that so much more than "It will get easier."  When you're operating on almost no sleep, someone smugly (it all seems smug whether they're actually be smug or not) telling me about how easy they have it now makes me want to scream. I vow to never say "It will get easier" to anyone going through the same struggles as me in the future, because even though I know - we all know - that it will get easier, it is simply NOT helpful to hear that in the moment.  I have a feeling that everyone who has had a newborn, who is now saying "it will get easier" will acknowledge the lack of helpfulness that the sentiment conveys.

This is the hardest part. 

It's so true. Or at least, I have to believe that it is, for I also imagine that if things only got harder from here then people would stop having children and humanity would eventually cease to exist. 

And even though right now I'm pretty sure that EH is campaigning to be the only child of this family - and believe me, DH and I are strongly considering giving him what he wants - I also have to believe that a couple of years down the road I'm going to forget about how horrible these sleepless nights are, and I'm going to do this all over again, only we'll also have a toddler to contend with at that point. 

And that's when I'll say to myself, "Oh wait, THIS is actually the hardest part."  And we'll just keep on going, taking things day by day, reminding myself that the easy part - that seemingly unreachable rainbow on the horizon - will someday be within my grasp.