After just 5 short weeks, I have come to realization that I breed children who don’t nap. At least not as infants. Whenever anyone would ask me how Stella was as a sleeper I would always have the same answer: she does pretty good at night, but napping: foggetaboutit. I can distinctly recall the frustration I felt when – after hearing and reading, over and over again, that all newborns do is sleep and eat – that Stella was having none of it. It was at this time that I found the beauty of the sling, and began to accept the reality that I needed to stop beating my head against the no-nap-brickwall and get a new strategy.

Porter has started spending more and more time strapped against my chest as I attempt to go about my life and get something accomplished each day. In much the same way that a mother’s spit becomes chemically metamorphisized to work as a cleaner or disinfectant, mothers also gain the ability to accomplish a record number of tasks in under 10 minutes, while simultaneously holding a child in one arm. Once I put Porter in the sling, I can double average productivity. If there were a Mother Olympics, I am sure that the sling would be banned as an illegal, performance-enhancing piece of equipment.

One day this week, Porter refused to nap between the hours of 11:00 am and 9:00 pm, instead choosing to subsist on little cat-naps. Each time an attempt was made to get him down he would fall sleep just long enough that we would think we were home free then, when we actually tried laying him in his bassinet he would be up and ready to party. It was precisely this type of activity that brought a flood of memories back from when Stella was a wee lass. The difference this time, is that I am not going to torture myself with thinking that I will win this battle. Instead, at the first sign of sleep defiance, I strap on the sling and proceeded to go on with my day.

On any given night, Steve and I average about 4-5 hours of sleep. Due to what I can only assume was sheer exhaustion for staying up the better part of 10 hours, Porter did give us a 5 hour stretch that night, but then promptly decided that he was pretty much done sleeping for the evening…at 2:30am. I have been racking my brain to try to remember exactly when Stella’s sleep pattern settled into a routine, but all that I recall was that at some point we finally settled into a moderately tolerable sleep-wake cycle, and that by 2 months she was sleeping through the night. Beyond that, my brain is all a blur.

One thing I do remember is sitting up one night with Andrea and Brian shortly after Stella was born and railing on and on about how hard all this was, and how completely blindsided you are by it. They – being the good friends they are – sat patiently and nodded, and basically, just let me vent. Most likely, secretly high-fiving each other for making the decision to remain kid-free. I don’t know if it was ignorance on my part or just lack of information, but I was just not truly prepared for how overwhelming it all is – even the second time. By this time I know what to expect, but the rules have changed. I have two now. Our lives are different and our routines are different. The expectations have changed. Although I know we will survive, it doesn’t necessarily change the fact that it is what it is.

I had a rather enlightening conversation with the receptionist at my dentist office last week that helped put things into perspective a little. It all started when she apologized for the delay in my appointment and I looked her square in the face and said, “Do you realize I am sitting here, by myself, reading a People magazine, and no one is begging for me or my attention? I can’t think of a better way to spend my time.” She laughed and commented that she can remember the chaos when each of her kids were born. We joked about breast pumps, germ-o-phobia, sleep depravation, the demands of extended family and the overall expectations of mothers. She was empathetic, but more importantly she made the point that one of the hardest parts is getting over the expectations we place on ourselves. We see the world, and all the mothers who have come before us and how they managed to do it. Nowhere in those perceptions do you get the stories of how they were regularly pushed to the edge of their sanity throughout the process. We get it into our heads that it is negative or weak if you complain about it or dare to admit that you are overwhelmed. And although we do get through it, it would be so much more comforting to know that you aren’t the only one who isn’t doing a perfect job of juggling the load of feedings, discipline, housework, quality spouse time, and of convincing everyone that things are just great, when really you have started wondering if a martini at 8 in the morning is really that bad of a thing?

Don’t worry, I’m not ready to lose it. It is just important to me to be able to acknowledge that although rife with rewarding moments, parenting is one damn hard job. I’d also like to be able to have this written down so that later down the road, if my children ever decide to have kids of their own, and can periodically feel the anvil of parenting crushing their chest, they will know that I was there once too. And that it is worth every moment. Like when Porter smiled at me for the first time this morning.