As a writer (and human), I tend to do my best work when well rested. Unfortunately, dating back to April 21, 2009, I've had about four uninterrupted nights of sleep that eclipsed seven hours, forcing me to modify that theory to read "put the pen to the paper and hope my kids don't bump into my arm." So, in other words, don't expect coherence today, folks.
Whenever a non-parent picks my brain about being a dad, the first thing they always ask is, "How do you handle the sleepless nights?" And it's generally accompanied by a cringing facial expression, as if I'm about to poke them in the eye. In a word, they look nauseous. Being a compassionate person, I try to be as diplomatic (read: deceptive) as possible. "You get used to it," I'll say. shrugging my shoulders and grinning mildly. Thankfully, my parental poker face is second to none and they are rarely able to detect my inner college student screaming, "What the fuck is happening?! And why aren't we playing XBOX?!"
In a nutshell, having interrupted sleep is like getting kicked in the balls. No matter how much you're used to the feeling, it still sucks. And you do, to a certain extent, adapt. You have to. There is no choice but to learn to live with it. But even now, 2 1/2 years into my new sleeping regimen, I'm awoken by a whining child and feel absolutely horrified.
It never fails- I'll toss and turn for several minutes before peacefully drifting off into a slumber, the static of the baby monitor on the end table serving as the white noise backdrop. I suddenly find myself dreaming of my 6th grade math teacher giving me a haircut while Miles Davis serenades me with Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" on piano. Right as the second chorus is about to hit, the baby monitor erupts with a siren wail that is Antonio. I don't hear it, though. Over the past couple of years, I've developed my own internal censor, apparently, since Sonia is at least 10 feet away from said monitor and hears it before I do. I finally wake up to Sonia's footsteps, trailing into the next room. For a moment, I'm worried that she's leaving me. Then I realize what an odd time it is to make that decision. Then I hear the wailing on the monitor, followed by Sonia's comforting words. Without fail, Antonio replies to those words with an angry, "I want daddy!!!!!" Fuck my life. Why me? And why on the same day I stayed up late watching Sunday Night Football? None of these questions will ever get answered, though, as I'm left to sit in Antonio's little kid chair that my ass barely fits in, while Sonia happily resigns back to bed, leaving me to wonder why in the hell Miles Davis didn't stick to the trumpet.
Granted, not every middle of the night awakening is a lengthy one (sometimes my kids cry for me and fall asleep by the time I get there- annoying, yet relieving). But being loudly woken up every hour on the hour until 6 am isn't what I call a good nights sleep either. It's what I call fraternity hazing. However, I must commend Sonia on, more often than not, allowing me to sleep on weeknights while she feeds baby Nate (who so far has no preference on which parent's sleep he interrupts), while she's still on maternity leave. But starting in October, the party's over. Meaning, during the course of a night, I will have two children vying for my attention at ungodly hours like a pair of angry vampires. The only difference is they're not draining my blood, but instead my brain cells.
They say if you don't know what you're missing, you can't miss it. And truthfully, I don't even remember what it's like to sleep in till 11:00 am on a Saturday. Hell, even when I have time to myself on a weekend (which is scarce), I don't spend it on sleep. I suppose it's possible that I'm so used to being interrupted while unconscious that my body rejects rest. I'm estimating, in fact, that the next time I'll enter REM sleep is sometime around 2024, when both my kids are teenagers and hopefully moved on to annoying each other in the middle of the night instead of me. My goal is to put them in the same room by the time they're 4 and 2, respectively, and to train Antonio as an orderly. Hey, why waste a resource?
So, next time you're groggily peering your eyes open at 1:30 pm on a Sunday, hungover from all those Patron shots the night before, remember that it could always be worse. You could have a child hitting you in the face with a fly-swatter five hours earlier.
Till next time, be strong and stay sane. And please share my story!
-Joe DeProspero
jdeprospero@gmail.com
Follow me on Twitter @JoeDeProspero
My Podcast (new episode up): www.courtesyflush.podomatic.com
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