When Mr. Burt and my parents asked me what I want for Christmas this year, I had a hard time coming up with anything. (This is saying a lot, considering my Christmas lists used to bear an alarming resemblance to Sally Brown’s.) It was much easier for me to come up with what I don’t want (heavy sweaters, sweatshirts, button-down shirts that have to be ironed…to which Mr. Burt replied in bemusement, “Does that leave anything at all for me to give you?” and which may not be so far removed from old Sally after all); I’m content with the things I have, and there’s very little else that I need.

Except for sleep. But last I checked, sleep doesn’t come gift-wrapped.

It’s been two weeks since Mr. Burt and I had a good, solid night of sleep, thanks to the Burt Squirt going through one of those physical development stages (learning how to pull himself up on the crib rail and beginning to walk) notorious for throwing off sleep schedules. (Also, gas.) Mr. Burt, I think, is actually getting less sleep than I am most nights–though apparently he’s not keeping count.

I, however, am.

Now, I learned rather early on in this parenthood venture that score-keeping is the quickest way to lose the marriage game, so it’s not that I’m sitting up in the middle of the night doing fuzzy math as the Burt Squirt nurses and resenting Mr. Burt for being snuggled up in bed. No, I’ve developed a more noble kind of arithmetic that revolves around me obsessing over Mr. Burt getting as much sleep as I do. Or me losing as much as he does. And me feeling guilty if I get more. Because that just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

A word problem:

If LR goes to sleep at 11ish at night and Mr. Burt at 11:30ish and the Burt Squirt wakes up at 1:30ish in the morning and Mr. Burt gets up with him, not coming back to bed until 3:00ish, how many hours of sleep did LR and Mr. Burt get if LR only slept intermittently during the hour and a half Mr. Burt was trying to soothe the Burt Squirt back to sleep and then got up to feed the Burt Squirt from 3:00ish until 3:30ish but was too wired to fall asleep until after 4ish and then was up at 7ish and Mr. Burt got up at 8ish?

I never was able to come up with an exact answer to my muddled math problem, but I got the gist of it across to Mr. Burt in conversation as we showered and dressed this morning:

LR: “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t sleep very much while you were up with the Burt Squirt.”

Mr. Burt: “Why would that make me feel better?”

LR: “Because we got the same amount of sleep. Misery loves company.”

Mr. Burt: “Oh. I’d rather you actually get sleep.”

For the first time in nine months of being a mom (and in six and a half years of being a wife, really, because I’ve always struggled with (unfounded) feelings of guilt and fear that Mr. Burt might resent me for not being a monetary contributor in our relationship), it hit me:

I don’t have to feel guilty about getting more sleep than my husband does.

Because he loves me.

And fairness and equality, while both very essential ingredients for a successful marriage, don’t have all that much to do with love.

Misery may love company, but love hates misery. After all, love is why we get up when the Burt Squirt cries in the middle of the night and lose all this sleep in the first place.

It brings to mind the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols: What I can I give Him / Give my heart.

Mr. Burt may not be able to give me exactly what I want for Christmas, but he gives me the one thing I really need.

As for sleep…maybe that’s what the Burt Squirt will give to me.

It’s amazing to me how many characteristics you’d think would be learned behaviors actually turn out to be hardwired into our genetic code.

Talkativeness, for example.

When I wasn’t quite three, my parents took me on a road trip up the Pacific Coastal Highway. They figured I’d sleep the whole way. It seemed a safe assumption to make, as most kids sleep in cars.

I, however, was not most kids.

Not only did I stay awake the entire drive through California, I talked the whole time, too, earning myself the nickname Chatty Cathy.

My mother also wished I would have a chatterbox child when I grew up. She has amazing power. (I’m terrified about the karmic retribution I’m in for after The Playground Incident.)

Though the Burt Squirt, of course, has never been called Chatty Cathy, he has been dubbed Jabberwocky. He’s nowhere near three, but any time he’s in the car, he’s awake and talking.

For that matter, any time he’s awake, he’s talking.

And as of 4:30 this morning, he doesn’t even have to be awake to be talking.

That would be the Bond coming out in him.

You see, the Burt Squirt comes from a long line of sleep-talkers. My shining moment occurred on a family vacation, when my father, up late reading, heard me say to my brother in the other bed, “Don’t tell Dad!” Dad once freaked my mom out by suddenly sitting up in bed one night and whacking the foot of the bed, saying, “It’s in the sheets!” Mom never was sure of what it was; maybe the same it my brother was talking about when Dad caught him sleep-walking one night and Greg mumbled something unintelligible before slugging Dad on the shoulder and saying, “Psst! Dad, pass it on.”

But it’s Mom who has, fittingly, the mother of all sleep-talking stories. It was Dad’s turn to get a little surprise the night Mom sat up in bed, grabbed his hand, brought it up to her lips, and planted a smacking kiss on it. When he asked her, bemused, what she was doing, Mom replied, “It’s a handshake–a friendly gesture!” and promptly lay back down.

I’d be more surprised if the Burt Squirt didn’t talk in his sleep. Though I thought we’d at least get through the baby monitor years before he followed in the family footsteps. Which was how I witnessed this milestone: Mr. Burt was putting the Burt Squirt back to bed after I nursed him at 4 AM, while I tried, unsuccessfully, to fall back asleep due to the stream of baby babble emitting from the monitor on my bedside table. I was feeling rather sorry for Mr. Burt, thinking he’d be in there a while if the Burt Squirt was that wide awake, when suddenly he was crawling back into bed with me, laughing.

“He was talking in his sleep!” he said, and I realized the baby monitor was silent.

“Aw, he said dada in his sleep while you were patting him,” I said, thinking of how my brother and I always had that uncanny ability to sleep-talk about or to my dad when he was awake to hear it.

The Burt Squirt’s sentience would have been more impressive had I not earlier that day witnessed him look directly at the cat and shriek, “Dada!”

In fact, dada seems to be the Burt Squirt’s word of choice for describing anything that makes him happy, as you can see in this video in which he is clearly not asleep.

…or is he?

My husband is a difficult man to buy gifts for.  You see, Mr. Burt is a content person.  If you ask him what he needs, he says, “Nothing,” and means it, and if you ask him what he wants, he can hardly think of anything, except for the occasional book, which, now he’s got an ebook reader, isn’t really the kind of gift you can buy on the sly and wrap.  Or he wants something big, like a new computer or electronic component, which generally exceeds the birthday or Christmas budget by quite a lot, and which he’d have to shop for anyway, because I’m no techie.

All these factors add up to Mr. Burt never getting a surprise gift over the course of our marriage.  The one exception was last Christmas, when I bought him a Nintendo DS, which would have been out of the budget if I hadn’t found a used one on Ebay.  Mr. Burt was completely surprised and completely thrilled to get a new toy he’d never thought to ask for, but what earned me the real wife points was the mod chip his brother persuaded me to buy with the money I saved getting the DS used. I don’t know if I can honestly say I find it “better to give than to receive,” as gifts are one of my love languages, but surprising Mr. Burt for the first time in our marriage was one of the best parts of that Christmas (and the lead-up; I couldn’t wait to see his face when he opened the DS and mod chip).  I got such a high from surprising him that I really want to do it again.

With Father’s Day and Mr. Burt’s birthday approaching in June, I have my chance. Up until the weekend before last, I thought I knew how I was going to do it.  A friend who shall not be named lest her husband read this post and have his surprise ruined said she was thinking about getting her husband a new camera for Father’s Day  (now all you husbands of my friends are wondering if you’re the one getting a camera for Father’s Day) and I thought this would be perfect for my husband, too, as he’s been using the camera quite a lot since the Burt Squirt was born and commented on more than one occasion that we should get a new camera sometime soon.  Not knowing much about cameras, I waited until we were at Best Buy shopping for a new dishwasher, and asked casually, as we browsed the electronics, if he’d thought about what kind of camera he wanted to get.  To my delight, he didn’t suspect a thing and happily browsed the selection of cameras until he found The One.

We’re deal shoppers in our household.  That’s never been a bad thing.

Until that day.

The One turned out to be on sale.  Mr. Burt declared he was going to buy it.

Now, if I was one to think on my feet, I’d have told him no, we’d had so many baby expenses lately and were buying a new dishwasher, that we really shouldn’t spend more money on a camera at that time, but I didn’t because I never talk Mr. Burt out of spontaneous big purchases like that because he never suggests making spontaneous big purchases if we don’t have money in the budget for them, and he’d have known something was up, anyway.  So I sighed and told him that was supposed to have been his Father’s Day or birthday present, and he laughed and said it could still be his birthday or Father’s Day present, but I told him to go ahead and get it because I knew he wouldn’t want to wait that long to use it to take pictures of the Burt Squirt and I could think of another surprise for him.

Maybe.

The other night was one of the rare occasions the Burt Squirt has gone down before my bedtime without a lot of fuss.  (A welcome relief after the previous night had been one of the Burt Squirt’s worst nights.)  Thrilled with the prospect of unexpected couple time, Mr. Burt stretched out on the couch, and I stretched out on top of him.  (Don’t worry, this anecdote is rated G!)  We lay there, relaxing, for a few minutes before I noticed something.

“You’re patting my back,” I said, my voice lilting upward in question; I wasn’t sure if he was doing it to be funny, or if he didn’t realize he was doing it at all.

Mr. Burt stopped patting and laughed at himself.  “Wow, I am patting your back, aren’t I?  That’s gotten to be a habit!”

Then the Burt Squirt woke up needing his back patted…

…for so long that the next morning, it was a groggy Mr. Burt who, in the midst of doing our finances, asked, “What’s this twelve dollar check you wrote to your parents?”

I couldn’t remember writing a twelve dollar check to my parents, but I don’t remember a lot of things these days.  “What was the date?”

“The eighth,” Mr. Burt replied.  “But it wasn’t cashed till last week.  Actually, I can’t believe the bank even cashed this.  You just made it out to ‘Parents.’”

“What?” I asked, unable to believe that I, even afflicted as I am with Mommy Brain, made out a check to my parents as ‘Parents.’

Mr. Burt showed me the carbon copy of the check.

I burst out laughing.  “That’s Parents magazine!  Remember, I got an offer for twelve dollars for a three-year subscription, plus a gift subscription for a friend.”

“Oh yeah,” said Mr. Burt.  “I need sleep.”

***

Mr. Burt may have been too tired to do our finances, but he did manage to let me know what I should get my hard-to-shop-for husband for Father’s Day.  And his birthday.  And Christmas.  For the rest of his life.

Sleep.

***

Mother’s Day is Sunday, and I asked Mr. Burt to get me a new coffee maker.  That’s sort of the same thing as sleep, isn’t it?

The click of the bedside lamp switching off stirred me from sleep.

“Wait,” I murmured.

There was a rustling of sheets as Mr. Burt started to lie down beside me.  “What?”

“Don’t turn the light off yet.”

“Why?”

I considered his question for a moment as I came out of the haze of sleep and realized I’d been asleep for some time while my husband read.  Why did I want Mr. Burt to leave the light on when I was trying to sleep?

Suddenly, I giggled.  “I was cleaning up poopies,” I told him, picturing myself scooping little turds off the floor, “and I needed the light so I could see to finish.”  It occurred to me that I should clarify:  “In my dream, I mean.”

Mr. Burt cracked up.  And proceeded to laugh for a few minutes, while I drifted back to sleep, wondering what on earth had inspired a dream about cleaning up poopies.  And what kind of poopies they were.

And why I kept referring to them as poopies.

Boy, do I feel pregnant!

I guess I did for a lot of last week, too — I was nauseous after nearly every meal, getting really warm at night and having trouble sleeping. Part of me wonders if my symptoms this week aren’t a bit psychosomatic, worse because I now know I’m pregnant (oh, by the way, in case you didn’t know, I’m pregnant) and am therefore attributing everything odd with my body to that.  But I am at five weeks, so I should be feeling some of the effects now. I’m having a bit of nausea and occasionally throwing up (mostly first thing in the morning and in the evenings).

The main thing is the tiredness, which seems to be getting worse every day. The only time in my life I’ve felt this absolutely drained was when I was on a particular birth control five years ago. Thankfully the sleeping problems haven’t persisted this week (though I am having to get up to use the bathroom a lot), but even though I’m getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night, I still wake up feeling run down and need a nap (or two). This morning I’ve had absolutely no energy and when I did finally drag myself to my desk to do a bit of work, I dozed off several times in the middle of typing. I’d shake myself and read what I was typing and realize I was typing the completely wrong sentence. Lunch perked me up a bit, so I’m going to try and answer a few emails after I make this post, but then I foresee a very long nap…

It is amazing and mystifying how an embryo the size of a poppy seed can leech every ounce of your energy. (I am, in all affection, calling the baby The Parasite.) But I can’t really begrudge him/her; it’s a lot of work developing your brain and vital organs.

I knew that having children would change me, but I wasn’t quite prepared for pregnancy — especially this early — to change me. Not in any huge ways, but I am finding it quite a challenge to my routine. I’m a creature of habit by nature, but I think especially because I work from home, a schedule is hugely important to me to get anything done. Before I got pregnant, the routine that worked best for me was to get up at 6 AM to exercise, wake Mr. Burt up a little before 7, hop in the shower, be ready to get to write by 8 AM, and do that for a good four hours, take a lunch break, and have another 3-4 hours of work.

Already this week, that’s all gone out the window. When you wake up exhausted and/or nauseous, you just can’t get up at 6 AM, and you really don’t want to eat or exercise first thing. (At least, I don’t. That trick of eating Saltines before you get out of bed is not working for me.) I’m learning already to listen to my body, to sleep when it wants me to, to eat when it wants me to, and to work everything I need to do around my body. (Not that there aren’t some things I need to be disciplined about — like not necessarily eating what my body wants to eat if it’s not healthy, and making sure I do exercise at some point, even if I’m feeling a bit tired.) Somehow I’m managing to get just as much done as ever, just not in my usual spurts. I can live with that. Especially if it gets the first draft of my  novel finished by the end of the summer, which is my goal…

I suppose this will be a helpful habit once the baby’s born, when everything will revolve not around my body, but around the Baby Burt and his or her demands. Flexibility is essential to parenting, isn’t it, or else you’ll lose your mind? (I can see why they say yoga’s a great thing to do during pregnancy — on many levels!)