Sleep Is Forbidden

Days Since Last Full Night's Sleep:  675
Days Until Next Full Night's Sleep: Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number, hang up and try again.

The last time I got a good night's sleep was in 2009. It's sad when you think about it, especially considering that the baby wasn't born until summer of 2010. What can I tell you, pregnancy sucks. I'm sure it sucks for women, but if you're a halfway decent man then it sucks for you too. I went from sleeping in a queen bed to sleeping on the edge of the queen's bed, to trying not to get scoliosis laying on the couch.

What happens after reading that Dollar Store pregnancy test is different for each man. When I saw that dollar sign and sad face pop up on the test, I was elated. Still, I didn't sleep after that. That test is the beginning of a countdown timer.

Nine Months To Get Your Shit Together

I spent most waking moments either at doctor visits, work, tilling the land and picking cotton for my pregnant master or just up on the internet trying to learn whatever I didn't know: Crib recalls, ergonomic strollers, which car seat could survive a plane crash. Then of course the mommy websites introduced fear that would send me into a state of panic: Lead paint in toys, the government's sinister plot to vaccinate children, Al-Qaeda's plan to use Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes to make our kids fat. It was too much.

You're having a baby girl!

Any possibility of sleep died once the doctor told us that.

Matrix mode (activated):      Learn Kung-Fu and how to use various firearms.
Lawyer mode (activated):     What state and federal laws allow me to assault a teenage boy on my property?
Therapist mode (activated): How many hugs will your daughter need to avoid becoming the girls you met in college?

And all of that was just the pregnancy. Once the baby got here, it was like living out the movie Inception. Am I asleep or awake? I never had to get up in the middle of the night because my daughter never went to sleep. If she did then it was just a quick power nap for ten or fifteen minutes. That gave us, the stagehands, just enough time to wash out bottles, empty the Diaper Genie and set everything back up for her next show. You're not officially a parent until you've fallen asleep and had a dream that you were still awake (watching the baby) and then woke up scared wondering where you put the baby.

Happy Birthday to you...you're one years old!

You still don't sleep. You used to wake up to make sure the baby was still breathing and that no stuffed animal climbed back into the crib to block her airway. Now you wake up because the baby's jumping up and down in the crib, running wind sprints from one end to the other and throwing projectiles at you trying to wake you up at three in the morning because she wants to play.

Even on those lazy Sunday afternoons where I catch a quick nap on the couch, I find myself defibrillated back to life by an Elmo Cell Phone cracked across my forehead or eight little gremlin teeth biting my nose.

Just lay there and she'll go way. Don't move, don't flinch. The T-Rex can't see you if you don't move.

That's when she takes her little finger and lifts my eyelid up. This won't last forever. I probably won't sleep during the high school years. I can't. Someone's gotta sit on the porch with the shotgun when the little boys come knocking. But eventually she'll go to college and start her own life. But even then I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing, hoping to God that I gave her enough hugs.