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.

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?

The Burt Squirt on the Diaper Deck, which, incidentally, was invented by his grandfather. Because the Squirt's daddy inevitably had a blowout whenever they were out, and in those days there were no such things as infant changing tables. A true family legacy.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating that for my first Mother’s Day, the Burt Squirt gave me eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Mr. Burt gave me the day off from diaper duty.  And a new coffeemaker.  All such thoughtful mommy gifts that it’s impossible to say which is the best.

Yesterday was Mr. Burt’s first Father’s Day.

He got a shirt that didn’t fit.

He volunteered to change two diapers.  Both turned out to be horrendously poopy.

Three times he picked up the Burt Squirt and became the target of projectile spit-ups of atomic proportions.

Apart from sounding like the “The Twelve Days of Father’s Day,” this must be proof of something.

Is it that I’m the Burt Squirt’s favorite?  Or does he realize, even at this tender age, the wisdom in not biting the breast that feeds him? Maybe it’s just one more example of the gender disparity inherent in Hallmark holidays.

One thing I’m sure of:  I wouldn’t have had as good an attitude as Mr. Burt if any of these misfortunes had befallen me on Mother’s Day.  He takes the bad parts of parenting in stride, without losing his smile or getting annoyed at the Burt Squirt.  Because he knows that in life, crap happens.  Literally.  And you’ve just got to clean it up and move on without letting yourself get mired in it.

This from the man who swore, before the Squirt was born, that he’d never be able to change a poopy diaper without throwing up.

So Happy Father’s Day to my better half.  I learn more from you about how to be a great parent than I could get any parenting book.  Especially since I don’t have time to read parenting books.

And Liam may only be three months old, but with you for his example, he’s well on his way to being a great dad someday, too.

And, as the poops of the fathers are visited upon the sons, you’ll be vindicated on a future Father’s Day.  What better present is there than that?

That’s not a complaint!  He’s great at sleeping.  At night.  Typically from around 10:30 till 8ish the next morning.  Without waking up for a feeding.

(He first did this on Mother’s Day — best present ever! — when he was just a little over two months old, and has kept it up ever since.  But I really shouldn’t brag, lest A) I incur hatred from other parents and B) jinx myself.)

So, to reiterate:  the Burt Squirt isn’t great at naps, but I’m not complaining because I get a lot more sleep every night than a lot of people who don’t have kids.

It’s not that he doesn’t nap at all; it’s just that he doesn’t nap for several long stretches a day, like all the baby books say babies his age should do.

(Though how is he supposed to do what baby books say?  He can’t read.  He can only learn by example.

His example, apparently, is our cat.)

Again, I’m not complaining!

Much.

Okay…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think life would be perfect if I had a little more time for housekeeping.  On the plus side, I’m learning the art of efficiency.

However, as good as I’m getting at cramming a lot into a very little span of time, I find myself doing anything possible to make those naptimes, when they do happen, last as long as possible.

Today, that meant using my food processor in the upstairs guest bathroom.

(Next naptime will see me cleaning said bathroom so my in-laws won’t have to perform their daily ablutions amidst the remnants of minced garlic and onion.)

Such great lengths to maintain a quiet napping environment, and the Burt Squirt still woke up before I could finish slicing and dicing.

Thank goodness for friends who come over to entertain wide-awake babies so Mommies can put together from-scratch lasagnas.

All through my pregnancy, I watched TLC’s A Baby Story religiously. All five times a day it airs. Then I called it preparation for childbirth. Now, twenty-nine days after giving birth, I’m still watching it, only I call it all I do is nurse my baby every 2-3 hours, what else am I supposed to do? comparing notes.  Herein follows my baby story: 

As you probably know, I was scheduled for an induction on Monday, March 1, at 6 AM, a week before my due date.  My OB and I had decided the previous week that it was a good idea to get Liam out of there because A) I was having major swelling issues that were causing a lot of discomfort, like carpal tunnel syndrome, and my blood pressure was slightly elevated, which put me at risk of developing preeclampsia the longer Liam stayed in and B) the longer Liam stayed in, the more weight he would gain; while my doctor wouldn’t let me go more than a week beyond my due date, the extra pound he would gain between that checkup and then might make all the difference between my being able to deliver vaginally or by Cesarean section.  (Which, actually, turned out to be an issue even a week early.)

So, on Monday morning, Jeff and I woke up at 3:45 to go to the hospital and have our baby.  We live five minutes from the hospital.  We were all packed for the hospital.  It doesn’t take either of us more than about 45 minutes to get ready.  3:45 was insanely early.  We were excited.

And then, at 5:15, we got a call from Labor and Delivery, asking if we could wait till 7:30 to come in, because they’d had a baby boom in the night and didn’t have a bed for me.  Which my doctor had told me never happens.  This seemed just my luck, and I started to get twitchy that all those women were having long labors and they’d have to bump my induction off the day’s schedule and I would have to stay pregnant.  But luckily I fell asleep again until about 7, whereupon the Labor and Delivery nurse called back and said they had a bed for me and to come on in and have my baby.

At about ten to nine, they began the induction, which, as it turned out, was barely an induction at all. I was given a minimal drip of pitocin, which got my contractions going, but after about three hours my doctor broke my water and my body took over labor on its own, so I probably could have skipped the pitocin all together; it was turned off at that point.

But after three hours of induced labor with no pain medications, I was spent.

I was only dilated to 4 cm at that point, and, knowing I most likely faced at least six more hours of labor before I even got to the pushing stage and was getting no personal gratification out of enduring the pain of labor, other than to be able to say I’d tried it out, I asked for an epidural.

All I will say about epidurals is that it’s a lot more fun to watch your contractions happen on the monitor instead of feeling them happen in your body.

My family couldn’t get over seeing the monitor spike up to the 100 mark every minute or so and going, “Wow, that was a huge one! You really didn’t feel it?” I did feel it — but only as a tightening in my belly, like false labor contractions, and then in later labor, like a lot of pressure in my lower back and butt.

Anyway, I was happy I went for the epidural.

Jeff was, too, as it allowed him to make it through the birth without me once saying, “I hate you! You did this to me! I’ll never let you touch me again!” Instead, we had a very sweet time together, working a crossword puzzle and watching TV.

And, of course, chowing down on ice chips, because I hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything since midnight the previous night. I was dying for a McDonald’s Big and Tasty with a vanilla shake (not helped by Jeff sending my brother out to get him McDonald’s) and helped get my mind off the increasing pressure of the contractions by dreaming of the meal I was going to have as soon as I gave birth.

Alas, I was not going to get to eat for much longer than anticipated.

After I’d been stuck at 9.5 cm for about two hours, my doctor said it was time to consider a c-section. Not because she wanted to get the show on the road, but because Liam’s head, though engaged at the 0 station, was turned so that it was actually causing my cervix to swell instead of complete dilation. She tried to turn him herself while I pushed, but he wasn’t budging. He couldn’t; his body was turned at a wonky angle from his head. He wasn’t going anywhere. So, after a few tears (of frustration and of pain — though not necessarily of regret, because those test pushes had hurt like the devil despite the epidural) it was off to the operating room for my c-section.

Surprisingly, I was feeling really calm about the c-section, though I’d spent most of my pregnancy terrified of having to have one. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let myself give in to fear or disappointment and not entertain the idea that I’d have trouble bonding with Liam this way or feel cheated out of the natural birth experience I’d envisioned. This was what it was, and I was going to make the best of it.

And when they lifted my little goop-covered 8 pound, 4 ounce, 20.5-inch boy over the curtain at 7:21 PM, all I could do was cry for joy and say, “Oh my God, look at all that hair! And those chubby cheeks!”

(Oh, and the little dickens — the instant they pulled him out, he let loose a stream of pee. Which, I later realized, must have been all over me. Only I couldn’t feel it, being all anesthetized…)

I didn’t care that my arms were spread-eagled out on the table and I couldn’t hold him when they put him up to me, because all I wanted to do was kiss and kiss those cheeks.

I couldn’t resent that Jeff got to hold our baby before I did, because it was amazing to see him become a daddy, to fall in love with his “little dude.”

Or to see, for the first time, my husband’s eyes fill with tears.

Really, I wouldn’t change anything about my birth experience. My birth plan absolutely went to pot, but my doctor and the nurses were all very supportive and went out of their way to make sure I was comfortable with every decision we had to make, and took excellent care of me and Liam.

That is not to say that I wasn’t dying to nurse him. Alas, it would be about three more hours before I’d get to do that, while they closed me up and sent me to recovery to stabilize after the surgery while they checked Liam out in the nursery. Though the time went rather quickly for me, as some of the medication to stop my bleeding made me sick and I promptly fell asleep on the operating table.

Meanwhile, Jeff followed Liam to the nursery and captured some of those precious first moments for me:

And then, finally, I got to hold my little boy:

As did Liam’s Grandmommy:

…Grandaddy:

…and Uncle Greg:

And then, alone with our son, Jeff and I just stared at him (and took pictures) for hours, taking in all his tiny changes of expression and trying to decide who he looked like:

There’s a line in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Lupin and Tonks have their baby, that I always thought was cute, but suddenly made so much sense to me in that moment of having my own child:   “Dora says he is like me, but I think he looks like Dora.” Everyone on my side of the family thinks he looks like me, and everyone on the other side thinks he looks like Jeff. We think he mostly looks like Jeff, though the head full of hair is me, and a couple of my baby pictures look quite like him. Though only time will tell, as every day brings little changes to his sweet little chubby-cheeked face:

Since I had a c-section, I was in the hospital for three nights. Which I didn’t mind, since I was in quite a bit of pain. It was nice to have a hand with Liam, though we kept him with us most of the time.

By Thursday, we were ready to go home.

I could walk by then, but hospital policy…It was actually quite like Jim and Pam’s baby episode of The Office, with Jim not pulling the car up to the front door of the hospital.

Liam loved his ride in his carseat, though we later discovered we’d dressed him much, much too warm for March in Texas! Babies do not get as cold as you’d expect.

Home!

Dorrie was not thrilled about what we brought home after four days. She ignored Liam and me, but was downright hostile to Jeff, hissing at him and swatting at him as if this was all his fault. Well, she had a bit of a point… But she got over it. Realized we like her better if she’s not being a rude gus. She’s getting curious about Liam, and now will creep up to him and sniff his head or hand without hissing at him.

The cat isn’t the only member of our family who’s adjusting to life with a baby.  It’s taken some trial and error, but Jeff and I are getting the hang of things.  I’ve got a new mantra (“Babies are messy; don’t take it personally.”) and the guilt of having laughed at my child peeing in his own eye during a diaper change, but we must be doing something right because four weeks later, we’ve had friends over and taken him out shopping and to restaurants, I’ve nursed in public, Mr. Liam is up to ten pounds and has outgrown all his newborn clothes, and is actually letting us get 6-7 hours straight each night.  (Not that he’s sleeping 6-7 hours straight; we’ve worked out a shift system that he hopefully won’t catch on to and decide to undermine.)  And he’s giving us the occasional smile.

Which makes it all worth it.

And that’s my baby story.

]]> http://www.lrburt.com/mom-blog/a-baby-story/feed/ 26