YOU'VE BEEN WAKING

Dear Spike:

What ever happened to that beautiful, long-slumbering baby we once knew — the one who continually slept through the night when she was just two months old?

Lately, you’ve been waking two, three and sometimes four times a night to use the bathroom and have a little snack. It usually takes no more than five or 10 minutes to get you back to sleep, but after that it is sometimes hard for us to get back to our own dreams.

In spite of her recent inability to get more than three straight hours of uninterrupted slumber, your mother is faring quite well. It is clear that she is tired, but she does not complain. And when I have offered to give you a bottle at night so that she can have a longer stretch of sleep, she has firmly declined. “It’s my job to feed her,” she says resolutely.

I’ve long prided myself on not needing as much sleep as most — four or five hours is usually enough for me — but lately I’ve been supplementing with more and more coffee. Seems I’m not as capable of neglecting my bed as I once was. In some ways that saddens me, as the wee’st hours of the morning were once my favorite moments to paint, read and write. But I wouldn’t trade this lot. Not for anything in the world.

At a holiday party, the other evening, a former colleague told your mother that she doesn’t understand why anyone would want children. “It just changes your life so much,” she said spitefully.

Indeed, your mother agreed, having a child has changed our lives. “But only,” she stipulated, “for the better.”

What my former colleague doesn’t understand about those sleepless nights and those tired mornings — and all the other little and big sacrifices that come with raising a child — is that it is so very, very worth it.

Sure, we’re tired. But last night, during one unusually long stretch of silence, I rose from my bed and tiptoed over to your cradle, just to watch you sleep.

It had been three or four hours since you’d cried, and already I was missing the ways you’ve changed my life.

Love,
dad