Yeah, yeah, yeah, my seven week old daughter shits a ton, has hijacked our sleep, and is exceptional. Blah, blah, blah, you've heard it all before. Nothing I hate more than new parents telling me the same old shit that new parents around the globe have been declaring as unique for decades. So I am going to go down a different path....the plight of the new father. No man would dare touch this topic within spit-up distance of his wife but seeing that I have an exceptional wife I am taking it on.
If I were to tell you the new father's typical day in isolation, away from the parallel 24 hours that are occurring for his wife, you would feel for him. Going to work every morning on five hours sleep. A rushed morning routine that includes getting his daughter up from a deep sleep and changing a repugnant shit-receptacle. Once at work he is forced to deal with the brain numbing demands of the office – " I would swear these idiots are less engaging than my seven week old." The drive home in traffic is interrupted only by the trip to the drug store to pick up breast pads and diapers. He finally returns home to a tired wife and a daughter who has decided that 4:30 -8pm will be her witching hours. He makes dinner, changes a few diapers, and attempts to tidy up the path of destruction from the day that was, all with a chorus of infant displeasure in the background. This leaves no time for an intellectual chat with his wife, sipping a California syrah, or enjoying a chapter or two of a good book. Don't even mention a beer with the boys, a trip to the gym, or the "s-word". Quite frankly – it sucks. We love the little angel to death, but anyone who tells you that the infant months are enjoyable is flat out lying. Either that or they had an absolutely uneventful and boring pre-baby existence. Mine was fantastic by the way.
So there's my day. Sucks eh? It does. However, it occurs simultaneously with the saga below:
My wife spends the hours of 12am to 7 am clinging to intervals of 1.5 hours sleep interrupted by 25-minute sessions of having her nipples alternately ravaged by a famished beast. She does this with her mate in a deep sleep in her bed knowing that there is nothing he could do even if she did wake him up. She then spends ten minutes playing percussion on the infant beast's back. Once the beast has released toxic gas from all of its orifices, my wife is then tasked with convincing the beast that having a nap is a good idea. The beast however is the oddest of creatures: it refuses sleep when it needs it most. Not sure about you, but I consider the following scenario absolutely idyllic: I am completely exhausted. My body feels like I have run a marathon and I just finished gorging on a breast oozing lasagne (insert your favourite meal here). Enter my wife declaring, "Honey please sleep for as long as you want. Don't worry about a thing." Apparently this fantasy is a result of nurture not nature, as I've heard countless stories (zzzzz) of the tired infant that refuses to sleep. Back to my wife.....when she finally does get the child into a state of slumber (I say fuck the phrase "sleeping like a baby") she has approximately sixty to ninety minutes to get some sleep for herself before the same barbaric cycle commences once again. At 7 am her husband wakes, retrieves the beast from her crib showering her with "Good morning Sunshine!" and "Boy...you were such a good girl last night. Honey, she must have slept for six hours straight no?" He then completes one requisite diaper change, enjoys a breakfast, throws on his work duds, and then heads off to expend cognitive energy with a group of peers. For her, this is the beginning of a day that consists of conversations that hit an intellectual peak during the monologue on the colour red. Other highlights of my wife's work day: four to six sessions of nipple torture; wiping feces that resemble butter chicken from between the shoulder blades of the beast; alternating the position of the beast from crib to swing to vibrating chair to crib to lap to arms to play pen to swing to crib to couch to bed to fireplace to dishwasher to compost pile all in an attempt to find that "sweet spot" where the beast appears content. By the way, none of the positions work. In the afternoon there's "the walk" – which us fathers sell to our belaboured wives as "pre-baby activity". Of course this is out of guilt, as we know that being outside walking aimlessly around the block really is nothing close to normal pre-baby activity, yet we need our wives to feel like nothing has really changed. Then, alas, dad arrives home from work with the breast pads and diapers that she forgot to pick up on her walk that afternoon. Finally she gets a rest – but man he has it easy.
I don't know....you be the judge.
Posts
