Crazybananas

Tomorrow I have to go in to the office and sit down with my boss for the first time since my baby girl was born. It’s only been three and a half weeks, but I just can’t imagine going back to my full time job and leaving her every day. I can’t fathom leaving her with a stranger at 7:30 a.m. and not seeing her for 9 hours. Yuck. Hopefully I can negotiate some sort of new contract where I work from home for 100 grand a year. Yup. Good plan, huh?

Everyone knows parents of new babies don’t get much sleep. You can spot new parents a mile away from the bags under their eyes and the lost look on their faces. Go to any Target at 9 p.m. and you’ll see the new parents swaying back and forth in the checkout line.

Our experience with baby sleep has been pretty typical. Lucy thinks daytime is nighttime and nighttime is daytime. From about 7 p.m. to 3 in the morning she screams for pretty much no reason. If she’s not screaming, then she’s grunting and squirming and writhing with the painful look of a person who is being tortured by terrorists. If you were just looking at her face and not the rest of her body, you’d think we were slowing cutting off all of her cute little toes. Oh, the screaming, the screaming!

The other problem is that Lucy does not like to sleep on anything that does not have a heartbeat. She absolutely despises the crib, bassinet and pack-n-play. Sometimes we can get her to dose off in the swing for about 20 minutes, but that’s about it. She’ll fall asleep nursing and then the second you set her down she awakes as if to say, “Um, excuse me, I need to be held. PLEASE! NOW!” And then the screaming commenses.

Last night we decided to take real action. And after a midnight phone conversation with my sister, who puts all of my problems in perspective because she experienced them too, except times THREE, Lucy finally slept. In her crib. For almost FOUR HOURS! Yes, it may be a fluke. But right now she is napping in her bassinet and I actually have time to write on this site. So let’s hope it is a fluke that will last longer than a day.

1. The Dog Whisperer
2. Best Week Ever
3. The Hills
4. TBS
5. Bridget Jones on our free Encore
6. Law and Order and CSI constantly on
7. BBC America means Coupling for everyone!
8. The DVR stops many fights about who gets to watch what
9. No more late night feedings with P. Diddy, Kelly Clarkson and Jessica Simpson hawking Proactive

This was taken right before we explained to Lucy that our road trip would not consist of going to any outdoor festivals or partaking in smoking of any illegal substances. She was understandably disappointed.

This past weekend we packed up the car, loaded the dog and the baby, and headed off for our first family road trip. Guess where? Manhattan, of course. We went back for my friend Abbie’s bachelorette party, so I could surprise the bride to be. I’d say the surprise worked, especially when she came running up to my car screaming while I was breastfeeding under what then became known as the breastfeeding tree.

That’s how things come around full circle. I used to get drunk and fall asleep next to trees, now I can be found breastfeeding underneath them…