I recently got on the scale for the first time in a month and came to the shocking realization that I'd gained a lot. I have no idea how this happened. I mean, my diet is exemplary. Today, for example, I had two cups of cream with a little coffee for flavor and a doughnut that was stale, so I'm sure sure it doesn't count. At church, we celebrated a birthday with cake after the worship service. I think the cake was blessed, and holy cake can't have many calories. Of course, I had to finish my son's slice as well: waste not, want not. For lunch I had a peanut butter sandwich, about seventy pretzels (but they were the little skinny stick kind, so they don't count) and half of my weight in chocolate. The chocolate didn't even taste good, and if you don't enjoy the food you're eating, you don't have to count those calories. I had a big, fat cheeseburger for dinner, along with enough fries to keep Idaho in business, but I ate while standing up and doing dishes because I was in a hurry to leave and play chauffeur to my daughter, and everyone knows that food consumed while standing doesn't count. Plus, I washed it all down with a Diet Coke, which negates the calories in the cheeseburger, so really I think I should be losing weight.
SLEEPING LIKE A BABY
Sleeping like a baby. Now, tell me, who on earth came upw ith that nonsense? Talk about an oxymoron. I haven't had a full night's sleep in fourteen years!
The minute you see that positive pregnancy test, you can pretty much give up on a good night's sleep for the rest of your life. Sleep deprivation is a way of life for parents. I'm saying that sleep deprivation is a way of life for parents instead of moms because I don't want to leave out the one father in Passaic, New Jersey, who actually gets up with his baby. For the rest of you moms, who walk around like zombies all day because you've only had thirty-five minutes of sleep, you are not alone. Why do you think Starbucks is so popular?
It all starts in pregnancy. Some say the sleeplessness of pregnancy is just the body's way of preparing us for the sleepless nights that lie ahead once the baby arrives. I say it's a cruel joke designed to make us question our decision to have a child.
For anyone who has never been pregnant and can't understand how pregnancy could cause difficulty sleeping, try this: Eat your weight in salt and walk twenty miles. That should sufficiently swell your ankles. Next, eat fifteen extra-hot burritos to make sure you get a whopping case of heartburn. Then do a little weight-lifting. A dead lift of five hundred pounds should do the trick to make your back feel almost as bad as a pregnant woman's. Before retiring for the night, drink a fifty-five-gallong drum of water to ensure you'll have to get up to pee every five minutes all night long. Finally, as you lie down to sleep, put a twenty-pound watermelon on your stomach. Sweet dreams!
After the baby is born, when the physical discomforts of pregnancy are gone, you still don't get a full night's sleep. You know the baby will wake up during the night. After all, you took the classes. You know the drill. You were warned that your precious newborn would wake up to eat in her first few weeks of life, but nothing really prepares you for the sleep loss that new moms experience. Imagine a smoke alarm that goes off two inches from your head in the middle of the night. The only way to turn the incessant wailing off is to carry it around with you for an hour.
I'm sorry to say that it doesn't get much better as the kids get older. Instead of getting up to eat, they get up because it's storming, or because they've had bad dreams, or because they need to tell you something they forgot to tell you five hours earlier when everyone was awake.
When older kids get up in the middle of the night, they don't scream and cry. You think that would be a plus, don't you? It isn't. What older kids do is walk into your bedroom, stand with their face a mere inch away from yours, and then proceed to stare at you until somewhere, in the deep recesses of your sleeping brain, you sense them there and crack open your eyelids to a pair of giant eyeballs staring at you. This scares the living daylights out of you, and you will not be able to get back to sleep for at least an hour- and probably only with the aid of some nitroglycerin pills.
Then there are the kids who like to stall when it's time to go to bed. Every night, it's the same routine. "Can I have a drink of water? Will you read me one more story? I have to go to the bathroom. Can I have another glass of water? Mom, where do monkeys sleep? Can I have another glass of water? Can you help me find my teddy bear? Why does the sun go down at night? Can I have a snack? I have to go to the bathroom again. How old are you, mom? Can I have another glass of water? Why do you look so tired, Mom?"
Perhaps you'll be blessed with children who sleep through the night and don't give you too much grief about going to bed. Even still, once you become a mom, you probably won't get a full eight hours of sleep on a regular basis. When your child is a baby, you'll lie awake, gazing at their perfect little faces. You'll periodically lay your hand on their chest, checking for the reassuring rise and fall of their breathing. You'll worry about your child's health and whether her growth will be stunted if she lives on ketchup and M&M's for a month. You'll worry about his social development: Will he be an outcast forever because he bit another kid at preschool? As they grow older, your worries will change. Am I really ruining my daughter's life by not buying her a cell phone? They'd better be home by curfew. I hope they make wise choices. I pray they don't get in a car accident. And you'll still lie awake and worry about them.
With all that extra awake time, you could do something productive such as scrub your floors, pay bills, or catch up on reading. I personally like to watch my children sleep. They look so angelic when they're sleeping. Somehow those kids who were running around like little maniacs just an hour ago now look so peaceful, so sweet, that I forgot how just an hour ago they were flinging pudding at the ceiling. When they're asleep, I can easily remember why I love this job.
From: "Because I Said So" by Dawn Meehan
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