Aaaaaaargh…

So in order not to scare the parents of newborns off so badly that they all decide to give up before their babies hit three months, I’m pretty sure that society is holding back information, only to be doled out in little quasi-palatable chunks.

Especially regarding sleep.

You see, there’s not much sleep that goes on the first month or so, and then gradually, you (and your partner, if you’re lucky) work out ways to get some sleep as the baby gradually starts to sleep more.

Ah yes… the baby starts to sleep more, lulling you into a false sense of security, and you think… whew, thank God we made it through those first few months, because seriously, we thought we were going to lose it.

But what no one tells you is that you’re going to go through that first sleepless period again and again and again.

Like when your baby has finally learned to roll over from back to tummy, and starts doing it in his sleep, stranding himself like a reverse turtle and waking up to fuss. Or when he learns a new consonant sound and just has to make it at 4:30 am, because 4:30 is a great time for “mmmboo… mmmboo… mmmboo…” (although, to be fair, the neighbors thought 3:30 am was a great time for the bongo drums just before this happened, so I can probably blame them for last night, at least).

Ah, yes, we’re reliving the good old sleepless days again, because our Mr. T here has a little body that needs to work on some developmental stuff, even when he’s sleeping, and his little brain can’t sleep through it.

And it is now that we find out, through the wonderful power of the Internets, that we have a couple of weeks of this return-to-sleeplessness ahead of us while he practices rolling over and getting off of his tummy (or falling asleep on it), and that we’d better just get used to it.

So we’re tired. Really freaking tired.

But the best part is this… I then stumbled on this little gem which says that not only do we get to start all over with the sleeping now, but we’ll get to do it again when he sits up on his own, and when he stands up on his own, and, well, all of the big developmental milestones during the next several months.

I mean, it’s great that he can now move himself around a small portion of the room by squirming and rolling, but couldn’t that wait for, you know, that day star thingie to be visible? Please?

(On second thought, since we’ll be in Scandinavia next month, I probably should take that back – the number of hours without the sun being visible will be considerably less…)

Sure, parents for whom this is old hat will tell you after the baby is born that you’ll sleep again when your kid is 25, but they don’t tell you what they mean.

Aaaaaargggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

(N.B.: If I weren’t sleep deprived, I’d be writing a post about how cool it is that Torsten is on the verge of being mobile and is making consonant sounds other than /g/ and /ŋ/…)