Sometimes, I feel like that guy from Lost, Desmond I think his name was. The guy who lived in a bunker or some remote cabin, and had to keep entering the numbers into a computer every 100 minutes or so, or else some indeterminate bad thing was going to happen. If I recall correctly, as I never really watched the show past the first season, and had to kind of catch up on it through reading synopses of it on Wikipedia, it was his negligence at entering the numbers at one point is what led to the plane crash that put all the show’s survivors onto the island in the first place.
But instead of risking a gigantic electromagnetic pulse being released, I’m at the perpetual mercy of my daughter’s feeding schedule, which has shown to be a feed every single 90-120 minutes, depending on if she can actually manage to nap in between in the first place.
Unsurprising, with my life more or less in repeated 90-120 minute chunks of time, one can imagine that it’s difficult to accomplish much in between. Especially considering that anywhere from 20-30 minutes of that chunk of downtime is occupied by the time it takes for her to actually drink all her milk, resulting in really, an hour plus of time in which I don’t have to be feeding her. Not to mention the fact that, as she is but a small baby, she commands an extraordinary amount of attention, lest she cry or become fussy.
Needless to say, there are some days in which become very mentally and physically challenging, when I know it’s a delicate and difficult balancing act between doing my actual job’s work, and being the attentive and hands-on dad that I wanted to be. It’s these days where I struggle to not grow too frustrated, and feeling like I have no real time for myself, because this is what I signed up to do as a parent, and something that I need to remember that it’s never just about me anymore, especially now, but I can’t help it sometimes, and still have days where I’m just grumpy and short.
Unlike Desmond from Lost, the chances of earth-shattering catastrophe isn’t likely if/when I let too much time lapse between feeds/naps, but given the wailing that my daughter is capable of when she’s over-tired or over-hungry, and it might as well be capable of making parents feel like their heads are going to explode.
Regardless, I know this is something that will eventually pass in time, but the whole point of writing out things like this, is so that I can always remember the things I think during the whole timeline of raising a child for the very first time, and perhaps one day, some random person will get into my writing, and read this, and if they’re going through the exact same thing, know that they aren’t alone, and that the things they’re experiencing are very likely not exclusive to them.
