Almost a month

Well, 4 weeks really. I finally understand why new parents celebrate every day their offspring lives: it’s awesome! I don’t mean the mere fact of celebrating sh*t, but how much said sh*t can happen in a day at this age. Because we see the little lady all the time, we can’t really tell that she’s growing (people tell us, though) but we notice when she suddenly looks at us more intently, or when her facial expressions resemble a smile more (we think)… and that sh*t is priceless. To us.

It also compensates for the fact that she doesn’t quite let us sleep all that much. From what we heard, there are way worse cases than ours. Still, every 3-4 (5 when we’re lucky) hours, baby girl will want to eat. Which means my wife (who’s breastfeeding) will wake up once or twice a night (3 times when we’re unlucky). That’s not the tricky part, though: the problem is, because she is more and more aware of things (and people) around her, it takes more and more time for her to go back to sleep afterwards. Which means my wife (who’s breastfeeding, again) will routinely take 30 minutes or an hour to calm her back down after a snack. Yesterday took 2.

Now, to be clear and before you call me a selfish misogynistic asshole, I still do things around the house besides occasionally waking up on my wife breastfeeding at 3am. I handle the late mornings, when she can actually get some sleep while I bring the little lady in the living room (who’s sometimes asleep, sometimes not). And I play back-up all day, whenever my wife has other stuff to do, needs to go to the bathroom (it happens), wants to take a nap… Arguably, that’s the lighter load among the both of us, then again I’m supposedly working. Supposedly.

The most surprising thing in all this — which you may find a little bit self-centered, then again you know me — is that I actually manage with way less sleep than I ever got before in my life. I’m a 8-hour-minimum kind of guy (which means I’ll never be President, they say). 7 hours, I’ll need more coffee. 6 hours, I’ll only function with coffee. Less, I simply won’t function at all. These days, I must be averaging 5-6 hours of real sleep a night (my wife must be around 4-5 including sleep-ins…) and I’m still able to write posts like these.

Nothing about ancient Greek philosophy though. Know thy limits.