Zzzzzzzzzzz

When I was pregnant and dreaming of life with my new sweet babe, I also did plenty of fretting. I don't know what newborns eat! How will I know if she's cold? I don't know how to give her a bath! But far and away, I worried most about how I would handle the sleep deprivation that is synonymous with new motherhood.

Dating back to my teenage years, I've had a tendency to lust after sleep as if after a particularly fine specimen of the male gender or a rich, luscious chunk of chocolate cake. In the ninth grade, I fell asleep during English class while watching Romeo & Juliet and had to turn in an assignment covered in drool. When I was a camp counselor the summer between my junior and senior years, I would conk out on the beach while my campers had their swimming lessons. Once I learned to drive, I would pass my car keys to a friend and curl up in the passenger seat while she busily drove us nowhere, as teenagers are wont to do.

I didn't outgrow this behavior as I got older. I remember an evening when I was a grad student during which I had curled up on a friend's couch and wailed at the cruelty of my friends who had come to round me up and take me back to my own bed. 

I also inherited my mother's ability to sleep through ANYTHING. There can be a freight train running through the kitchen and neither of us will so much as stir. Obviously, this was also of concern with the impending arrival of a squally newborn. My poor dear Jack is a light sleeper, and the decibels at which I require the baby monitor to blare in order to rouse me shatter his fragile sleep as though it were a Fabrege  egg.

Fast forward through nearly ten months of parenthood, and we have a sweet baby girl who sleeps through the night extremely well. The days of bleary midnight wake ups and stumbling to the crib appear to be behind us, at least for now.

But in the mornings, I still crave more sleep like a chicken pox-sufferer craves a good, deep scratch. I drink it in greedily, sinking in it, luxuriating in it. Thyroid medication, exercise, anti-depressants and caffeine have all failed to keep me from flinging myself into the Sandman's illicit caresses, morning after morning. Sunshine helps a little; when we lived in Arizona, I rose unprompted before 0700 each day. I thought I had outgrown my adolescent-like daily early morning coma. Ha.