So the one thing people keep saying to you when you have an infant on the way is "SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP". Sleep whenever you can and when the baby comes sleep when he does.
Sounds like a simple enough idea. So simple and obvious that it is almost insulting. I am not the baby here and I can figure out when I am tired and when I need rest. Been doing it for years and besides I don't need that much sleep anyway. I have been running off small amounts of sleep since college and have done nicely with this arrangement.
A baby, on the other hand, needs lots of sleep. Depending on what you are reading, a baby's need to sleep could reach upwards of 18 hours a day. So again this "sleep, sleep, sleep" thing sounds painfully easy to grapse. New parents get 18 hours to sleep too, right. Surely one can squeeze a nap in there somewhere. Well...I (and my wife) have not taken a single conventional nap yet. We have tried giving each other a "break" by letting each other sleep for one of the eating cycles (i'll get into those later) either early in the morning or late at night. It is like a little sleep appetizer that is enough to remind you how much you like sleep but not enough to satisfy any real hunger because the baby rarely ever sleeps more than 2-3 between feeds. It turns out once you add normal life activities to the baby routine, or lack there of, 18 hours of sleep becomes elusive.
I'm sure we will find the time to steal some sleep in the future or at least that is what people tell us. It is true that Atom has created such a drive in me to stay awake and to watch his every move but that doesn't stop me from occasionally daydreaming of days past where sleep was so abundant that I never felt the need to over indulge.
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