Sleep

It’s 2:42 a.m., and I’m mesmerized by the way your head, a little skull wrapped in thin skin and wispy hairs, fits so naturally in the crook of my elbow. It shouldn’t—my crook is angled, and your head is rounded. It shouldn’t fit, but it does. 

I’m standing beside your bassinet, my body shielding you from the light in the hall. There’s a sway. A gentle bop, an off-kilter figure eight. Tension rises up into my shoulders, even when I try to hide beneath the relaxed mask of my sway. I suspect that I’ll never hold a baby again without a sway, that after just two months of motherhood, my body is eternally programmed to activate its “calming” mode when handed a newborn. 

When your eyes are closed, I’m at peace, even when it’s 2:42 in the morning. I’m at peace because I can exhale. Because I can check out for a moment. Because I’m not trying to figure out how to satiate your angry tears and make you sleep. 

Soon, I’ll put you back in your bassinet. I’ll close my eyes for what shouldn’t pass as sleep but has to. Then, with the rising sun, you and I will start our day, even though “day” and “night” have little meaning anymore, except as mile markers for another 24 hours gone. Your naps will be unpredictable in frequency and length, and I’ll try to sleep alongside you, but it’ll be a surface-level rest, my muscles tensed, waiting for your cry. 

I always want sleep. Every moment, it feels, I want sleep for you, and I want sleep for me. It’s not fair that Goodnight Moon and “Hush Little Baby” put me into a half-lidded daze, while your little wide eyes still peer around. I swaddle, I shush, I swing. Dr. Seuss could write a book about oh! the things we do to get you to sleep! We’d read it to you, and then you still wouldn’t sleep.

Finding the bedtime routine cocktail is a parent’s mixology masterclass. It’s a magical individualized specialty drink, handcrafted by Oompa Loompas and unicorns. Our current recipe: We now turn off almost every light in the house to initiate bedtime. We swaddle; you bottle. Dad sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Could We Start Again Please?” as you fall deep into a milk coma. “Less light,” he whisper-yells. “More singing,” I suggest. A dash of this, a sprinkle of that. What combination will yield the calmest night?

But wait—before you answer: You have to understand that I need you to sleep. I mix the dashes and the sprinkles in what I hope is just the right way, because you need to sleep. Your sleep has become the gateway to my own meager sleep. The baby books talk about helping you find your “circadian rhythm,” but the pendulum must be out for repair, because the other night, even though I rolled you around in circles in your stroller at midnight, your eyes watched me expectantly, waiting, unaffected by the beat of the wheels or the cycles of the moon. You’re not lulled by what you “should” be lulled by. Or if you are, it’s a precarious lulling, a tentative lulling, unsure about whether it wants to stick. My mask of calm at the end of the bedtime routine hides a sharp panic, a bleary string about to snap as I wait for your unfurling wail. I need the cocktail that won’t be pushed back across the bar, dumped out and mixed fresh. 

I need you to sleep because I’m desperate to function again, to be a human being with cognitive skills and eyes that can focus. I need you to sleep because I’m not me anymore. I need you to sleep because in one short month, I can no longer float in a world where day and night have no meaning. I’ll have to be awake, alert, showered, and out the door before the sun rises so that I can stand in front of a classroom of high school students and give them the same level of focus and attention I want you to receive from your own English teacher in 15 years. I need you to sleep because I’m otherwise terrified of stepping back into my pre-child, well-rested life.

It’s 2:52 a.m. At sunrise, my eyes will sting from exhaustion. Maybe, in a month, my eyes will still sting as I stand at the front of my classroom, and maybe, in 15 years, I’ll lose sleep thinking about you behind the wheel of a car. Maybe I’m starting a long season of life in which a full night of sleep is the exception rather than the rule. 

My sway is barely perceptible. You breathe. I breathe you in and watch you and feel you and love you, calm in the crook of my arm.