My girls came home from the hospital on April 30th, 2007 and we struggled to settle into a four hour feeding/sleeping interval schedule. The predictability was the only sense of frail composure in my sleep-deprived, post partumly depressed brain.
Six months later, along comes our trusty friend Daylight Saving Time (or rather, the end of it). I know to "spring forward" and "fall back", but I couldn't always calculate if that meant I would be early or late. It didn't matter. I would dutifully change the time, and follow the clock. "Losing" or "gaining" an hour was never a big deal.
Then I had two babies.
The delicate balance that existed in our household was like a thin sheet of ice on a warm spring day, a microscopic fissure just waiting to crack open with catastrophic results, or so it felt in my overworked brain.
Unlike (most) adults, its a bit more challenging to shift sleeping and eating patterns for an infant, much less two of them simultaneously. Daylight Saving Time felt like this completely ridiculous, totally unnecessary wrench in my schedule. What did I care if it was lighter later or earlier? The whole concept felt outdated and ludicrous.
I remember we had managed to push the nighttime feeding from 3AM until 5AM. A blood-sweat-and-tears feat that took six months to carefully manipulate.
When DSL ends, we move the clock back; we "lose" an hour. What it meant for me was hearing those needy cries at 4AM instead of 5AM, which felt like needlessly unravelling half of a nearly completed hand made sweater, and being unable to do anything but pick up those knitting needles and start all over again.
Looking back, I realize that having some control over the feeding schedule (as opposed to feeding on demand) saved my sanity, and over the past few years, I have developed a strong belief that not only do babies and toddlers need routine, but adults do too.
 |
| Snoozing atop the milk factory |
No comments:
Post a Comment