October 25, 2010 1:30 pm

Averages

One of the more frustrating things about barely seeing my baby during the week is this: If he has a “bad” day (cranky, poor napping) on the weekend, I don’t get the benefit of the rest of the week to average it out.

Wesley had the sort of day yesterday where I honestly feel like I spent the entire day trying to get him to nap. He was clearly very, very tired but wouldn’t fall asleep, and the rare couple of times he did fall asleep he took ridiculously short 20-30 minute naps.

Then it was hard to get him to go down for the night because he hadn’t slept much all day. He would fall asleep, I would make it from the living room to the bedroom with him, and as soon as he sensed he was near the crib he was wide awake again.

After succeeding in my multiple attempts to FINALLY get him into the crib asleep, Daniel came home from the grocery store and started rustling the paper bags to fold and put away and Wesley woke up SCREAMING like monsters were eating him. Back to the living room we went to sit and rock and nurse and jiggle.

I didn’t get to go to bed until after 11:30pm and Wesley wanted to eat at 12 and 2 and then was wide awake after his 4-something feeding for no good reason and proceeded to keep me awake by screaming in my face every couple of minutes or so for about an hour, at which point I had to get up to take a shower because I missed taking one the night before. So! I am very tired. (Teething again? Maybe?)

It sucks not only because I am a zombie today, but since we were out-and-about on Saturday, yesterday’s mess was basically my whole weekend with him. I don’t get the benefit of having six other days of him being mostly pleasant to average out one day of crankiness.

I find myself getting resentful that he’s being a bum and then I get resentful that I’m being resentful and then I get angry that I’m even IN this situation and it makes the zombie-me very unhappy.

If I were at home with him, I’d figure we could try to sleep in the next day and either way, it’s not a make-or-break situation. As is, I get to hope that daycare puts him down for naps appropriately and I have the lingering memory of him screaming at me during the night to keep me going during the week. Not so good.

I cherish the time I have with him on weekends because it’s the only time I get to really hang out with him and see what he’s like – most weekdays involve me hustling home and wolfing a bowl of cereal for dinner so I can play with him for twenty minutes before he needs to get ready for bed.

I’m mostly bummed that I feel like I didn’t get enough “quality time” with him and now I’ll have to wait until the next weekend to try again.

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3 Comments

  • Melissa says:

    I don’t have any advice, but I can sympathize. I’ve been dealing with this for 10 months now and people wonder why I have a hard time.

    All I can say is that I hope Wesley snaps out of this soon. I always say the same about Andrew, but it hasn’t happened yet so I just live each day hoping it’s going to be better than the last.

  • Meggan says:

    He was fine the next day (Daniel got him to nap for around 2hrs in the morning!) but my point is that I don’t get to experience the “fine the next day” – even if he does snap out of it right away, I have to wait until the following weekend to hang out with him and then just hope we don’t have a repeat of the crazy day. I’m irritated that I don’t have the opportunity to see things improve, I guess.

  • Erin says:

    Yeah, that would be the downside of the other side of the spectrum you were talking about earlier. When that used to happen while I was working, it was always so stressful because when you are at home together, you want it to be wonderful. So when babies are being stressed out babies for whatever reason, it’s kind of upsetting. I totally get what you mean. It seems like they grow so much faster too, because of the time you are away. It’s kind of bittersweet really, whether you stay at home or go to work. They grow so fast!

    Hopefully things in this world will align so I can get a job out of the house again and you can stay home with your little one. Then we both win. =D Work in progress, eh?