my baum shelter

If I had a penny for every time a nursery worker, daycare provider, family member or friend said to us, “I’ve never seen a baby fight sleep like this before,” when describing babyBaum, we could easily retire and pay for many of you to retire, too. Many of these people, especially ones who have taken care of children for 20, 30 plus years usually flash a pacifying smile our way when we try to describe the difficulties with putting our child to sleep. “Yes, yes, I’m sure we’ll manage,” they say sweetly while smiling a smile that says, “You new parents are so cute – worrying over everything and convinced no one else can take care of your baby.” We smile back in return. Only our smile is saying something like, “We wish we could communicate to you what you’re getting yourself into.”

You know how Presidents always look like they’ve aged 20 years in the 1 or 2 terms they’ve been in office? How there are way more gray hairs and they just look more gaunt and haggard? It’s much the same process that occurs when we drop off babyBaum with someone new at the church nursery or with a family member or friend for the first time. We always return to someone who visibly looks older, more worn down. And, usually, before we can even get fully through the door comes the all too familiar choruses of ~

“When you said he fights sleep, I didn’t believe you.”

“I’ve never seen a baby fight sleep like this before.”

“I mean, I would be rocking him for 30 minutes and he would be fighting it and then finally close his eyes, then two seconds later pop his eyes wide open! Really. And he did that over and over again for two hours.” (This always makes us laugh because it’s usually conveyed to us as if we will not believe this behavior took place even though we tried to tell them at the beginning that this is what exactly would happen.)

“Are you sure he’s human?” (Okay, no one has ever asked this before – not out loud, anyway, but they sure have looked at him like he was not of this world when describing his hate-hate relationship with sleep.)

My poor mother (hi Nana!) is so worried that babyBaum has turned us off from having more children (and thus depriving her of more grandbabies) that she mentions to me almost weekly now (used to be daily in those dark early days) – “You know this isn’t normal, right? You know babies aren’t like this – he’s just an anomaly. You couldn’t possibly have another one that fights sleep like he does. I mean, what are the odds?”

And therein lies the rub. See, I have a pretty good track record for beating the odds and not in a lottery winning kind of way. No, more in a getting struck by lightening twice kind of way. I’ve engaged in all types of self-analysis over the years to try and figure this out – bad karma? not praying hard enough? taking too much delight in recounting my misfortune in humorous (and yes, Cliff, witty!) ways? Who knows. I’m old enough to accept this is my lot in life and wise enough to know that I am EXACTLY the person who would get blessed with two, three, or more babies who treat sleep like the plague.

The problem is that babyBaum is an incredibly ALERT baby. Like high alert. Like high, high, high alert. Everything engages him. Forget toys with lightshows and musical numbers. All this baby needs to be energized and fully engaged with the world around him is a darkened room with four walls. And he is not only awake – he is able to talk to his monkey while finding different noises he can make on the crib rail when pushing on it while seeing how many fingers he can stick through the crib rails at once while also seeing how far he can get the other arm or one of his legs through another crib rail kind of awake. The boy just doesn’t turn off. Ever.

And, while this created much sleep deprivation for him (and consequently, us) in his early days and still now, the older he becomes, the more complicated problems we face as a result of his ability to be stimulated by any and every thing in the world around him. For one thing, my precious babyBaum forces me to talk to strangers all day long and is also now the dreaded “biter” at daycare. But, those are stories for another day.