Prior to the arrival of my daughter, I read a book about new fatherhood, as well as watched a few videos and read some stuff on the internet in regards to new parenthood. Naturally, there’s a tremendous amount of overlap when it comes to the rigors of being new parents, and they often times make it sound like the sleep deprivation and dirty diapers are the worst things since the Bubonic Plague.
I guess I’ve conditioned myself fairly well throughout the years, to where I can operate on low amounts of sleep and make do with coffee alternatively, so the sleep deprivation wasn’t nearly as hellacious as all accounts make it sound like it’s going to be, and I’ve cleaned so much poop and urine from a lifetime of having pets that poop and urine from my own offspring doesn’t seem remotely close to being disgusting or nauseating.
Needless to say, it’s tempting karma to say raising a child has been anywhere close to easy, because it most certainly has not been, but when it comes to the things that most outlets and resources cite as being the worst things in the early stages, have been basically nothing to me.
I guess I should’ve started reading more books about once the baby has come home, and the things that start to happen after the third of fourth months, because I feel like now, we’re getting to the stage where I’m beginning to become frazzled and unglued at times, because I frankly am not always handling the pressures of trying to placate a wailing baby in the best manners.
Long story short, I didn’t know about sleep regression, and I didn’t really prepare myself to the rigors of teething. And when they’re hitting simultaneously, resulting in a screaming baby that is in pain and won’t nap, and then they stay up past their nap time and hit their next feeding window and then they’re overtired and mixing in wailing about that and won’t go to sleep and we can’t put her to sleep because then she’ll never be able to go back to sleep when we get to her actual bed time; that’s where I feel like I need to have an arm that’s twelve feet long, because that’s about as much of wrist I want to slit when the shit hits the fan sometimes.