5 Steps

the 5 stages of grief/coping with a loss are as follows:

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

these are also the 5 stages of dealing with a tiny screaming baby late at night.

addy likes to fight sleep, which is crazy because all newborns do is sleep all day.  she’s sleeping right now as i type this blog because she was milk wasted at 10am. but it’s not the sleeping during the day that she fights.  it’s at night time when i’m good and sleepy and just want to lay down.  she feels her giant eyes getting droopy and will jolt awake with high pitched screams like we’re beating her to death.

and i can’t say she didn’t get it honest because there was a time when i would beg my dad to let me stay up and watch Carson with him and i’d laugh and laugh through the monologue like my 5 year-old brain knew what was really going on.  i never made it to the first guest, but as soon as he’d tell me to get in the bed i’d swear i was just “resting my eyes” or “going to take a little nap”.  but i was 5 and addison isn’t even 5 weeks.

with her we’ll do a feeding, change her, put her in her jammies, then be all “yeah it’s time to lay it down little girl”. i may give her a pacifier just to make sure she’s all good.  she starts to drift…and drift…and drift. and right when i think i can lay her down she howls. and howls. and howls.  we know she’s fed and clean and comfy.

we deny that this couldn’t be happening AGAIN.  that something is wrong and we just happened to overlook it. so we check the diaper again, or try and do some more burping cause maybe she has gas (i mean she is a brownlee). we switch positions and sit her up, lay her down, put her over one shoulder, let her face the tv. but things usually check out ok and we go to the next step.

anger. i know she’s a cute, tiny baby. and we don’t yell or anything but it’s just a frustration that goes along with a screaming baby.  she does this thing where if you have her laying on your chest, she will scoot and scoot from your chest on up into your neck, rear her head back and scream directly into your ear.  i’ve said several times, “addison i heard you the first time” but she doesn’t care.

bargaining. i’ll turn on the sleep sheep, light turtle, tv, gloworm, offer her kisses, pacifiers, more boob to see if she just happened to get hungry again. more kisses and finally saying “will you just stop please?”

depression. on several occasions me and brownlee have just laid her down on the bed and watch her scream. our hands on our face like some sort of Baby Blues comic strip.  she looks up at us like “what are you idiots doing, help me, i’m screaming” but we just need a minute to regroup.  i know at least i do.

and finally acceptance. yes our baby is howling. yes it is past 1am.  yes i am sleepy.  yes this is ridiculous.  but it’s our baby. we got to get her to sleep somehow.

and then it just stops.  a quick and sudden silence comes over her and she shuts her eyes and closes her mouth and will just go to sleep.  whoever is holding her is stuck in that position like those street performers because any sudden or incorrect move will start the whole process over again.