Everyone knows that once the baby comes, sleep is scarce. However, until you have a child, you will never understand the level of exhaustion that a parent of an infant experiences. I thought I knew. I thought I was prepared. I mean, I didn't sleep well while I was pregnant anyway! From peeing every hour to tossing and turning to get comfortable to waking up from crazy dreams (Oh, you're being chased by tigers? You gave birth to a grizzly bear? You are the sole human survivor of a natural disaster and your only hope of continuing survival is to slay your enemies- aka. anacondas- with your recently acquired karate skills? Yeah, WEIRD.) Noooooo noooo noooooo my friend, you are not prepared. Baby needs to eat every 2-3 hours. If he/she is going through a growth spurt, they may want to eat every 45 minutes. If you are breastfeeding, it is only up to you. Your partner can snooze away in dream land while you are up feeding and soothing your little one who has 2 o'clock in the morning confused with 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And, well, there's nothing you can do about it. You just do it. And suddenly the person that needed at least 8 hours of sleep per night in order to function the next day, can function (rather well) on 3. Who would've thought?! Mommies before you say "stick it out! this too shall pass!" And it will! But it hasn't for me yet. Max is 4.5 months old and right when I bragged about his new awesome sleep pattern (11 hours straight- woo hoo!) BAM! We are smacked by the teething monster and a sinus infection. Might I add that this is the first time he has been sick and when I woke up at 6 a.m. to the most awful hacking cough, I was horrified.
Quick!! Call 911!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, I almost called 911. I'm new at this, I didn't know what to do. I fought the urge to call 911 and called the nurse triage line at our health clinic instead. The nurse said to take him to urgent care. I threw on my hoodie and tennis shoes and was about to head out the door when I realized that urgent care opens at 8 a.m. and it was 6:30. OMG. I silently panicked for the next hour and a half and then cursed the people at urgent care in my head because they were in no hurry to get to us. He needs to be seen. Someone needs to tell me what's wrong. Is this pneumonia? Babies can DIE from pneumonia. Where is the doctor?! What kind of place IS THIS? $@#%&!
It was a sinus infection. He is fine, but no longer sleeping well. Poor baby... Poor mommy... Ugh. I am still mildly traumatized thinking about that morning. "This too shall pass".... well, I'll let you know when it does. And for those of you that had babies that slept through the night from 6 weeks on..... kiss it. Unless you gave them Nyquil, I don't understand how you did it. But I wouldn't sleep well even if he did. I'd still wake up to check... is he breathing? Did he roll over and get stuck? Did he choke on his spit up?
No, he didn't. Whew. He is sleeping like an angel. For the next hour anyway....
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