Back to work

This month I have finally resumed my before parenthood full schedule of work. I officially went back to work when The Boy was 8 weeks old, but I have refused to work overnight or 24 hour shifts until the past couple of weeks. John made an interesting point: The outsider might wonder why I wouldn't prefer to work nights, since The Boy is asleep anyway. My reply is that there is just something about bedtime that is particularly special. Who doesn't love a quiet moment with a sleeping baby in your arms?

The first 24 hour shift went very well. No tears, just a few too many messages to John requesting updates about dinner and his evening bath and of course plans and execution of putting The Boy to bed. The second 24 hours shift was terrible. I was huge baby about the whole thing and whimpered about it all night long. I did everything I could to remind myself that work is important because we need the money and it is easier to get 24 hours worth of work out of the way consecutively so that I have the other 5 days of the week to spend with My Boy. Fortunately, my line of work does come with the benefit of personal satisfaction and good karma. I can't imagine I would have been able to drag myself away to work a job in sales or something.

I realize now that I have been preparing all 3 of us for this change throughout the fall and it wasn't until last month that it just came to me that it was time. No more midnight snacks, new sleeping attire to adjust to the cold, the time change... all of these changes put The Boy in a particularly bad up-every-2-or-3-hours sleep cycle.  It took almost an hour of tough love and yelling (The Boy was not crying, when I realized he was yelling I felt comfortable ignoring it) and ever since he has been happy settling himself back to sleep if something stirs him awake. We now have a baby that will sleep for 12 hours at a time (ok, he spends the last hour or two with us in bed, but what's not to love about a snuggly sleeping baby?) that hardly makes a peep at night.

I wonder how long it will be before I will learn to take advantage of so many hours of uninterrupted sleep. I still wake up every few hours to check the clock. And for some reason the hours between 3 and 5am are the most difficult, I am just awake. And then at 5 I am back to sleep until The Boy stirs us all awake for the day. The other day I realized that I have not had a full nights sleep in 1 year and 3 months. That seems Ridiculous! when stated so plainly doesn't it?