How Did We Get Here?

I have a lot of friends and relatives who are either pregnant or have recently had babies. It seemed like, for a while there at least, we were in this first big "wave" of babies. We had Ella. Our close friends had twin boys. My friends at work were all having babies. A year or so later, we got a fresh new round of babies. And then, for a long while, nothing. No babies. Now, some friends of ours had a baby a few weeks ago, and I've been following their first weeks as parents on Facebook. I've seen what you'd expect: a multitude of posts about sleep deprivation and endless crying (the babies, not the parents, but, well, you know...). This prompted a discussion with other friends (those in the "first wave") about why we, as parents, tend to post, talk about, etc., the lows (if you will) of new parenthood rather than reveling in the highs. The general conclusion (and I'm paraphrasing here) is that the lows are more interesting. It's totally fine to launch a discussion on Facebook about how your darling daughter woke you up six time between the hours of 10 and 4 and how you'd kill (literally kill) for some sleep. It is somehow less interesting (and borders on bragging) if you post that your darling daughter is at the top of her class and has been pulled out for accelerated reading classes.

But really, the thing that has struck me most as I follow these posts about sleep deprivation is how far we've come. Granted, it has been seven years, which is a really long, long time. I can still remember nights of desperately rocking a wailing Ella at 4 in the morning while sitting on top of the radiator because it was so damn cold in the house (hmm, maybe that's why she was crying?). I can still remember our torturous weeks of sleep training Sadie, trying to sleep while she cried for hours (literally hours) because I simply could not take another week of waking four times to nurse her 10-month-old self. I also remember how grateful I was to nurse her daily at 4 a.m. once we finally got her to "sleep through the night." I remember my sinking suspicion that she would always completely suck as a sleeper. And I'm so glad I was wrong.

All of these memories, though, are sort of distant and fuzzy. It's hard to remember now what the big deal was about the crying and the sleeplessness. It's almost like being a solider from a far-off war. You have all these memories of really trying times but they're so faint now that you almost wonder if you imagined them. (Not to trivialize war or anything because I imagine it's a good deal worse than sleep deprivation; I just can't think of a more apt example).

Meanwhile, I'm living a life where my greatest parenting frustrations (this week--and remember, it's only Wednesday) are Sadie's new nighttime pee habit, which disturbs my precious sleep exactly one time and not even daily. And Ella's new habit of completely submerging my hair brush in water under the misguided belief that it will make her hair less "poofy." It seems like such a short trip now to the more long-lived frustration of both of them borrowing my shoes. Happily, it's an easy matter (for now) to buy myself a new hairbrush and let Ella and Sadie dip the other one in water to their heart's content. I can't say I miss my endless web surfing to find someone, somewhere who could solve our significant sleep problems for us (I actually considered paying an obscene amount to hire some "sleep training specialist" when Sadie was just under a year old. Seriously. And as much as I sometimes think a third baby would be nice (if not relatively impossible), I'm pretty happy with a life that doesn't involve high chairs or strollers (much) or even five-point safety harnesses anymore. I always fancied myself a baby person and used to joke (before I had kids) that I would like to keep a child until they turned two and then turn them out so I could have a newborn again. But the thing I am discovering as my children grow older is that they just get cooler. A newborn Ella was a wondrous thing, and I'd jump at the chance to experience that again--only without the stress and uncertainty that comes with new motherhood. But a seven-year-old Ella is truly a sight to behold. A newborn Sadie was a virtual rock star (now with 75 percent less crying than baby #1!). But a four-year-old Sadie truly kicks ass. We've come a long way, baby!