Before I had a baby, I’d scoff when people would tell me how disregulated their kids were after the holidays. These routine-bound parents struck me as rigid and uptight. Everybody deserves a little fun, right? Extra treats, running wild with cousins, playing fast and loose with bedtime – it seemed like the frothy good stuff, the icing on the cake of a well-spent childhood. But now that I’m a parent, I’ve changed my tune. Our daughter’s first Christmas is several days in the rear view mirror. And we’re all still recovering.
We made it to my mother’s house on Christmas Eve, our car stuffed with baby gear, presents and diapers. Forget the parents who shepherded her there – our daughter was the main attraction. Everybody wanted to watch her crawl and eat. They clapped when she clapped. They pointed where she pointed. Our daughter delighted in being passed from lap to lap. We schlepped our stuff upstairs to a room with four twin beds and a broken doorknob. I set up our daughter’s playpen; my sister read her “The Night Before Christmas.” And then it was time to go to bed. But the baby refused to sleep. Every time I lowered her into her playpen, she’d wail and wail. Crying it out is okay at home, but crying it out at 2 a.m. in a packed house of relatives didn’t feel fair. So we took turns sleeping with her in our narrow twin beds, holding on tight, wedging pillows behind her back and hoping she wouldn’t fall out. By morning, we were bleary-eyed and exhausted.
Christmas Day brought all the usual excitement – presents, a big family meal, a tromp outside, and, of course, no nap. The baby socialized her little heart out, even as dark circles grew under her eyes. That night, we decided to take a different approach to our sleeping arrangements. We pushed two twin beds together, shoved a blanket in the crack, and covered them in a king sheet. This worked until a 2 a.m. diaper change, when our daughter, diaperless for mere seconds, peed all over the bed. I wanted to change the sheets. My husband proclaimed this was too much and throwing down a towel would suffice. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the pee.” So we switched sides of the bed. I found myself without any covers, so I decided to turn on the light. But I couldn’t find that either. As I groped the wall in pursuit of the light switch, I accidentally closed the door. It clicked ominously. We were locked in.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked, my voice rising in mild panic. “Should I call the house phone? It’ll wake everybody up.” “We don’t do anything,” my husband replied. “We go back to sleep. We’ll wake up the whole house in a couple hours when one of us has to pee.” “Alright,” I said, resigned, climbing back into bed. If worse came to worse, there was always that package of clean diapers.
I woke up at 5:45 a.m. to a sharp kick in the back. The baby was awake. I texted the family group chat. “We’re trapped, and I have to pee!” I wrote. Minutes later, my mother’s boyfriend was at the door, screwdriver in hand. We were free — and officially exhausted. Somehow we packed the car. The baby slept the whole way home. She went to bed early that night, and slept well into the next day. The circles under her eyes are only now starting to dissipate. As for me — now I understand those parents complaining about their disregulated children. I am so glad to be home. And I’m ready for a long winter’s nap.
– Sarah Harris is digital editor at the Addison Independent