Tick, Tick, Tick

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you have a malfunctioning alarm clock. You need this alarm clock--it gets you through your life. You love this alarm clock--wouldn't trade it for the world. But it just doesn't go off when you want it to. In fact, your alarm clock doesn't even malfunction the same way every time. Basically, you don't know when it's going to go off. It might start to beep seven hours after you've fallen asleep, just an hour before you were planning to wake up anyway. Or it may go off only two hours after you've fallen asleep, startling you out of a dream to discover that there's still so much night and morning left before your new day begins. And guess what? This alarm clock also takes about an hour to reset. So prepare to devote some time to setting your alarm clock back in position before you yourself can go back to sleep. And before it goes off again.

That's kind of what having a baby is like. Kind of. At night at least.

As Hubby and I continue to play sleep roulette, Baby continues to surprise us with sleep behavior that doesn't reflect any sort of pattern. The night before last he fell asleep at 9 pm and woke up at 11 pm. Only two hours. Compared to his usual sleep from 9 pm to at least 1 am--sometimes 3 am or 4 am if we're really lucky. Why only two hours? I didn't have any caffeine that day. Nothing traumatic happened. Could it be a growth spurt? Overstimulation? We wonder what we're doing wrong, or what we can change. It often doesn't seem to matter. Baby has had short sleeps in long sleeves and short sleeves. Sock or no socks. When he's eaten a lot or when he's eaten a little. So we don't know what to do differently in order to get him to sleep longer or more consistently, except to just keep keeping on. Bedtime routine. Quiet room with no lights. Get him full. Last night he slept a little longer, but not by much. I gave him a bath--did that help? He got fussy earlier--was that why? We wonder and continue to try things. In the meantime, the clock has become a major part of our lives.

And I don't just mean the alarm clock metaphor. Once you have a baby, everything is about time.

While at work I have to pump at least three times a day. When I pump, I have to do it for at least 15 minutes. I'm constantly counting down and looking at what time I can stop.

When I feed Baby at night, we try to be equal to both sides. So at least 20 minutes per side while breastfeeding. Again, I look to the clock, for when Hubby will return to help me switch Baby to the other side. Once he's asleep I count 10 minutes to ensure he's deep enough for us to move him without waking.

Then there's cleaning the pump parts, which have to soak for 5 minutes. Pumping after nursing--about 10 minutes. Making sure we start bedtime at exactly 7:30 pm if we're giving baby a bath. 8 pm if we're not.

Calculating how long we hope he'll sleep and how long he actually slept after his first wake up in the middle of the night. After his second. After his third.

Making sure I leave work at 4 pm on the dot so that I can get home by 4:15 pm when I'm at the campus closest to my house--4:45 pm when I'm at the campus far from my house. If I take too long packing up at the end of the day, that's time away from him where he might demand more milk that I could give him if I was there. Otherwise, his caretakers might have to open up another bottle. That's milk I could have used for another day, which means more pumping, which means more time.

Tick, tick, tick. I'm constantly looking at the clock.

The ticking sometimes makes me think of another clock. You know the one. The older Baby gets the more I start to think about--and others occasionally ask me about--when the next baby will come. With basic biology, I can only get in so many future babies before I can't anymore. Right now, I feel like I still have time. But how long do I wait? How many do I have? Time marches on, and I'm not really so afraid of it right now. Still, having a "deadline" of sorts--that good old biological clock--complicates a decision that would otherwise be a lot easier. If my son had been born in my 20s, I could afford to take my time with Baby #2. But if my son had been born in my 20s, he wouldn't be the baby he is. He would be another baby. The combination of timing and eggs and sperm and genes and chromosomes would not be the same. The circumstances would be different. Maybe I would have a beautiful baby if I had children in my 20s. But my son as he is right now wouldn't exist.

When you think about it that way, it's not such a bad thing to be reminded of "tick, tick, tick" and the passage of time. Time passing means Baby is growing up and growing strong. Thriving. That his heart is beating. That he's here.

I heard the tick, tick, tick of Baby's heart monitor before he was born. I heard it slow when his oxygen dropped and he was in danger.

He's here and not in danger and his heart is beating.

So let the minutes tick away. Let my baby alarm clock wake me every hour if he has to. I don't mind counting so much.