Red Flags at Night

So my son is now nearing three weeks old. He blinks his big eyes, he gurgles, he coos, he snuffles and squeaks. He sounds like a puppy registering his alternate satisfaction with and confusion about the world. Another sound he makes – generally at 3am – is that he screams. There are a whole range of cries, many of which Dan can peg at 30 paces: the poo cry, the hunger cry, the I’m-alone-and-don’t-like-it peevish, staccato bursts of complaint. But occasionally, the boy gets a bit of something twisted and sets on to screaming, during which time we neither sleep nor stop asking ourselves what we can do to alleviate that horrible sound. We are concerned that something might be wrong, yes, but mostly we want it to stop. We don’t always need to know why. We just know that our darling, sweet creature is so unhappy as to shriek himself hoarse and to want him to stop.

This is rare, though. I’m going to tempt fate, break faith with Dan, blow all my Karma and admit that my baby is fairly mellow, and that I sometimes sleep for three to four hours at a stretch without interruption. I sleep better now than I did when I was pregnant. I sleep the sleep of the desperate sometimes, but I also get hours of sleep at a go. A friend of mine whose son did not sleep when they were raising him as a baby said she was glad babies were sleeping through the night now, but was skeptical and wished she’d known then what people seem to know now because, as she said “We didn’t deserve that.” “That” being the fitful, hollow-eyed awaking every hour or two sleep of new parents that sometimes makes you feel like you are paying for your connubial bliss and the love of your new child with the very marrow of your fatigue-ground bones.

Even as a Graduate student, teaching five classes and taking four while writing articles and a dissertation, I slept more than “that.” “That” is a rare space reserved for parents and combat veterans. In fact the last time I was awakened regularly in the night was back in Basic Training. We were often awakened for some task or duty or another, then asked to sit in some spot of light in the dark while the rest of the sleepers breathed around us. The lucky found something to do: write letters, memorize articles of the UCMJ, count cracks in the linoleum that we hand-polished every Saturday. The unlucky fell asleep, to awaken to the screaming of an unhappy drill sergeant. Generally, you could be washed out and have to repeat training for falling asleep at your post. And deservedly, too. Although we were Air Force, you knew at times we’d be guarding things and it would be important to stay awake.

Later at Wilford Hall Medical Center, where I served the majority of my time with the USAF, I was put on night shift and spent the hours between 7pm and 7am. When most other good people are on their couches and in their beds sleeping, I was manning the inpatient pharmacy, making iv’s, counting pills and pushing endless carts up through the wards. We did a brisk business and had few technicians, so the night crew became very tight, but I’ll never forget that feeling of the alarm on my watch going off at 4am – end of my lunch hour nap – and trying to drag myself back up after being fed, reading a smattering of the Norton Anthology pick of the day, then drifting contentedly off to sleep, only to find that I had three hours left of shift, an hour’s commute then three hours of class before I’d sleep next. Yes, many miles to go before I sleep. So be it.

You know the Russians used to torture people this way.

Yet when that 2am, 3 am, 4am cry comes, you want to be ready. If you have stayed up too late watching a movie, so be it. If you have partied til 1am, so be it. If you’ve been on the porch and the shrill voice has come over the baby monitor, so be it. The child that so readily demands your attention actually probably needs something important from you, or has a fart he can’t deal with. Sometimes, they just need the reassurance that they’re not alone in the dark, to face the tigers and hyenas alone. So you get up and shuffle over, pretty sure that you’re the scariest thing in this here dark room, but finding strangely that to your child, the bed-fuddled appearance is comforting and with enough feeding, patting, shushing and sometimes plain old time, the child goes back to sleep.

So at three weeks, we have some rough hours, but not too much of “that” and in the morning, I’m usually pretty happy to see little smiley there in the crib, screeching or not.