Defeating the Sleep Terrorist
Newborn, New Dad
Very soon after my daughter was born, I developed an approach I deemed Aggressive Sleep. After not sleeping for two days, and eating leftovers from my wife’s hospital room service, I decided the only way I was going to survive this fatherhood thing was to take every opportunity to catch up on sleep that I could.
In the hospital, every time the nurses came in for a vitals check (seemingly every two hours or so, throughout the night), every time baby was feeding, ESPECIALLY if baby was sleeping, I was curled up on the sofa-bed with a blanket pulled over my head.
It actually started out great, as my wife felt free to wake me up at any moment she felt she needed help. Her water needs filling — I’m on it. She’s dead tired and baby won’t go to sleep — I’ll take our baby. The unique advantage (concerning sleep) I discovered is I had no fundamental value to breastfeeding, which remains my wife’s preferred method of feeding (Not technically true — first few weeks you really should help track feeding times and durations, which breast, etc. But stay with me here — how long does it take to indicate R or L and jot a number down?). So I would get baby situated at mama’s breast and immediately jump back to the sofa bed. In my opinion, my Aggressive Sleep approach helped both of us out, as I quickly restored my energy and was able to take on increasing responsibilities with mama (filling water bottles, phoning for room service, emailing baby pics out to family and friends, reading through Congratulations cards and emails / texts, and reading through the various Don’t Shake Your Baby handouts — be prepared to get THOROUGHLY depressed about shaken babies), and baby (DIAPERS!, costume changes, new blankets, PICTURES!, burps / spit ups, tracking of wet and BM diapers, staring at this perfect little miracle of a thing, placating, attempting to decipher cries, attempting to calm / comfort baby’s cries, letting baby suck on the soft part of your pinky, debating whether baby will someday be an Olympian or play in the NBA…)- my sleepless corpse wouldn’t have been much good.
And then you come home. And the word Routine becomes not a threat, but your Holy Land. If baby will just eat, they’ll be full, so they’ll fall asleep, then you can go to sleep. But it doesn’t work that way. If your baby’s anything like ours, they don’t suffer fools or dirty diapers. But if you wait for them to tell you about their dirty diaper, they’ve probably been shaken out of their milk coma and will be fussy and need another hour or so before they’re ready for sleep. And if you didn’t remember to burp them before they ate, they may be extra gassy, which will make them fussy. See above and add an additional hour to your sleeplessness because they’ll probably soil their diapers (again) AND spit up all over themselves, requiring another costume change.
If your goal is to get as much sleep as possible (If it’s not, go write your own essay, SuperDad), then I recommend following the Checklist.
As you’re a dad, then allow me to deduce that you've fantasized at some time or another about being a fighter pilot. There’s you, cutting through the clear blue sky, strapped to a rocket, Mach-One and upside-down with your hair on fire (Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full). While it may seem all sunglasses and rolled-up flight suits (Advise you not to click on this link), it’s more about paperwork and going through checklists:
Fuel quantity — CHECKED. INT. Fuel tank selectors — MAIN or fullest tank. INT. Carburetor air-RAM/COLD. INT. Mixture controls — IDLE CUT-OFF. INT. Throttles — SET. INT.
Propeller levers — Manifold pressure, etc. You get the point. Before you ever buzz the tower, before you go Flaps Up — Throttle Up — Release Brake — GO, you go through the checklist.
For those of you who haven’t yet mastered the art of listening to your baby, I present to you the most efficient way to get back to sleep during your newborn’s endless restless nights. This is most effectively employed for the middle-of-the-night wakeups, but feel free to use any time your baby wakes from a nap or otherwise. Your first signal is baby wakes up or baby cries.
1. Diaper.
Pick up baby, take to change table. On the way, you can check major vitals — baby’s temp, color, make sure this is still your child. Burp baby on the way to the change table. If Diaper is clean, move to item 2.
Costume change as necessary — if this smells of stale milk, please change your baby’s outfit.
2. Swaddle.
Your best swaddle blanket, and make that straight jacket tight. The last thing you want is your baby to jerk themselves awake later, which tends to happen when they free their little terrorist arms. Take baby to mama. Burp baby along the way. The more gas you get out now, the less chance the terrorist gets awoken by gas later.
3. Feed.
Feel free to fall back asleep. Mama will wake you if she’s having trouble putting the terrorist back to sleep.
Sleep well, little prince. Your Sleep Terrorist lives to fight again.
//NOTE// Above addresses Dirty Diaper — Hungry — Gassy, which was 90% of the fuss we experienced. If you’ve gone through the checklist and baby doesn’t fall asleep (or refuses food and remains fussy), move on to the other two likely cuplrits: Lower Wind, and Tired. WebMd has tips for both. I’ve found my baby really takes to being on my shoulder with some back pats while I’m bouncing on an exercise ball.
//UPDATE// Please read the follow-up piece Being Defeated By the Sleep Terrorist from a newly humbled Dad.
