Most parents have a routine for everything – morning, bedtime, bathing, eating, leaving the house, etc., the list can go on forever. These routines become our savior. They make us sane and bring peace to chaos. Routines, even at 12 weeks, have given us confidence that we are getting the hang of it, adding normalcy to our lives, and are often the things we look forward to the most.
We had established a bedtime routine to near perfection and Isabel was sleeping from about 7pm-4am straight (give or take an hour). In the early AM, I’d unswaddle, change, reswaddle, hand to mama to eat, and go back to sleep.
Needless to say, I had definitely taken this routine for granted. I was getting great sleep and Mrs. FWL wasn’t doing too bad either (less than me for sure, but much more than the first weeks). It was as if we were counteracting the forces of the matrix and the red pill we had swallowed the minute we became parents, wasn’t so bad afterall.
Then Mrs. FWL went to dinner with friends for her birthday (god forbid). Neither of us thought the night would be any different than the previous 5 weeks. I mean why would we?
10:30pm rolls around and Isabel is crying. This isn’t abnormal as she sometimes cries and knocks right back out. But not tonight. Tonight was different. Tonight she, or her body, or satan, had other plans. Tonight, there was a blip in the matrix. That red pill that we swallowed was coming back to bite us in the ass.
Mrs. FWL walks in about the same time and finds me in our room, rocking Isabel. WTF?!? And so began a dance of feed, rock, sleep, feed, rock, sleep. All. night. long.
Naturally, we are now traumatized. We have not had another one of those nights (knock on wood) since, but who’s to say it won’t happen tonight, tomorrow night, or in two weeks. As flexible and confident in our routine as we had become, we got blindsided. Now we are even more scared aware that anything can instantly change.
I read not too long ago that parenting is comprised of moments and phases. This was just one of those moments, and it happened to suck really bad. There will be more of them and I’m sure we’ll be blindsided by them again. But ultimately, the red pill will lead to a wonderful life and the good will outweigh the bad, and that is an imbalance I can live with.
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