We’ve now had our worst night ever with our son. Or so I’m told….I slept through most of it.
You see, we are now alternating nights/mornings with Baby MPB. This allows one of us to get some sound sleep while the other one does the middle of the night wake-ups, if there are any. And this is working much better then the system we were using about a month ago when I was up every single day for all the night-time wake ups and morning shifts. (I had become a walking zombie and it got so bad that I was actually excited for my surgery and hospital stay so that I could sleep. And ill admit a really horrible part of my is almost glad Mr. MPB had to suffer through a sleepless night).
In addition to our new system, we have also fallen into a really good groove with Baby MPB (and please don’t shoot me for saying this) – Baby MPB sleeps from 7pm until about 5am. We wake him up to feed between 10pm and 11pm and he goes right back to sleep until 5am. On really good mornings he sleeps until about 6:30am. On not so good mornings he starts to stir around 4:30am. So, I know we are fortunate in the world of baby sleep – really fortunate in fact.
Well, back to the other night, it was Mr. MPB’s night and evidently the normal extended nighttime sleep didn’t happen. Evidently Baby MPB was up every 30-60 minutes. It was the night of his vaccinations which seems to have thrown him off.
Anyways, clearly Mr. MPB didn’t get much sleep and had a rough night.
But, for the record, I’ll point out that I also woke up multiple times through the night too – it’s hard to sleep through the cries of an upset baby. I tried to offer some suggestions (which were not welcomed at all so I stopped) and at one point I got up to sooth Baby MPB as Mr. MPB was fast asleep from being up so much all night long. But, I also knew that the next day I was on the road with work which required me to run a public meeting and drive 6 hours. And I’m always very nervous of driving that many hours in a day without sufficient sleep, so I didn’t offer to stay up and take over for the rest of the night. And nor did Mr. MPB ask me to.
I guess, my entire point here is that I tried to help for better or worse. And it appears that my help was not welcomed or appreciated. So now our house consists of an exhausted Mr. MPB and a tired Mrs. MPB, and a happy Baby MPB (who should be tired).
And to make matters worse, because I am heading out on the road for work all day I’m very nervous about how I’ll manage without a good night’s sleep. And at the same time I’m worried about how an exhausted Mr. MPB will manage the evening without my help or the nanny’s help.
I really am starting to think that sleep deprivation is the hardest part of being a new parent. Honestly, I had no idea people could actually function off so little sleep. And I have the upmost respect for parents who are functioning off this little sleep all the time, you truly are amazing!
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I am unable to discuss specifics, but what I can say is that we were facing a very unexpected international adoption battle within our Country which was fundamentally critical to our son’s life long well being. Various departments in various levels of government were not speaking to each other and asking for things that literally DO NOT and CANNOT exist within Canadian or USA law.
No-one would speak to anyone. In fact, often times departments refused to even speak to me and/or return my phone calls as I tried to figure this out.
Eventually someone actually suggested that we need to leave the country and try to re-enter so that they could get the paperwork done correctly (note there is no guarantee that the boarder agent would have let our son re-enter without the proper paperwork which of course we do not have). And at that point, I got really annoyed because there had to be a better solution for a problem that we didn’t even create. So, I began talking to anyone and everyone who would listen. I kept phoning, and phoning and phoning each and every department. I kept being a pain in the butt. And, I didn’t stop.
At one point, I threatened to contact every single political representative would could possibly help.
At one point we almost hired an immigration lawyer to try to help. Because when it comes to our son, what’s another couple thousand dollars?
At one point I threatened to go to the local and national media. Because as much as we would have hated to do it, I know if we put our smiling faces all over the 6pm news and explained what the government bureaucracy was doing to our innocent adorable son, we would have won.
Needless to say I am thrilled to report that I recently found out my efforts/threats worked after countless hours and tears. Today I can happily report that I won this war for my son’s benefit. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
But what’s probably the most frustrating thing is that after months of dealing with this, the problem has magically been solved by the one department that always had the power to solve it if only they could see common sense.
So, the debate I have now is do I still go public? Do I start raising awareness about this, as we probably aren’t the first and definitely wont be the last to endure this. Honestly, I don’t know how much I want to take on this project, it’s massive. Yet, I also realize someone needs to. There are some significant issues with international adoption (and adoption as a whole) that I am unlikely to ever be able to fix, but this one I might just be able to. I dunno…maybe once our son’s adoption is finalized I’ll start tackling this properly. But maybe it’s also time to just get on with living and not being consumed with all this stuff. I dunno.
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My Perfect Breakdown 