Need More Sleep

I wholeheartedly believe there is a Divine Conspiracy afoot when it comes to issues and circumstances involving the birth of a child.  I think that God floods the brain with a memory erasing chemical that wipes out the pain and negative aspects of the whole process, so that years later you find yourself saying, “Yeah, we should have another kid.”  Were this not the case, I believe each couple would have one child, look at each other, and say, “We’re never doing that again!”

For the woman’s part, it’s not all that hard to see how much pain they experience up to and during the birth.  Why do you think they make those hospital doors out of 8 inch thick hardwood?  You could set off a hand grenade in the delivery room and never hear it out in the hallways!  I’ve been told that the pain experienced by a male passing a kidney stone is similar to that of a female giving birth.  I wouldn’t know if that’s true or not, because I’ve never done either.  What I will tell you, though, is that you’ll never see a male two years down the road say, “I think I’ll go out and get me another one of those kidney stones.  I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

The only logical solution here is that even though the pain is intense enough to measure on the richter scale, it is somehow blocked from making a permanent impression on the brain.  I don’t think it’s tied only to the birth or even to just the woman.  I believe it extends through the entire adjustment period and to both parents.

We’ve lost a lot of sleep.  My wife has lost more than I have (I’m legally bound to say that, or she’ll be all like “You don’t even know what it is to lose sleep!  You just get up and change the baby then go back to bed…”).  The sleep loss starts to have a sort of bipolar effect on you after a while.  You get tired enough, and you’ll swing between railing about the way the towels are folded, to uncontrollable giggling fits about silly words like ‘Hoboken’.  The longer the sleep deprivation goes on, the more severe the effects become.  Everything starts to get on your nerves, from how loud the kids are breathing to how the dog keeps eyeing your peanut butter sandwich.

Eventually, the child does sleep through the night, you get some good rest, and everyone starts to get adjusted to the new norm around the house.  Somehow, memories of those stressed and strained times just simply fade away.  You remember that it was rough, but none of the gory details about how rough it really was.

To be fair, there is an alternative to the whole “mind erasing” theory.  It would be that the rewards of a precious new little life so outweighs the struggles that they simply pale in comparison.  But that’s just silly.  A Divine Conspiracy is so much cooler to think about.