Baby insists on doing most things against the book…like sleep on his tummy. This is a horrible no-no and we only allow it if it happens that he is face first on one of our chests. When he lies on his back, Baby’s hands fly up in the air occasionally as if he were falling. Josh researches this response and learns that it is a remnant of our primate days when baby monkeys use to fear falling out of the tree. Now we are trained to swaddle babies so their little arms stay firmly wrapped to their sides. Anyone over 50 will be baffled by this since for years babies lay on their stomachs to sleep–and sleep better they did too. But no one wants to be a SIDS statistic so on their backs the babies go.

Baby hates his swaddle and prefers to be loosely covered with a blanket instead. Another no-no since he could get smothered in the blanket. He could also get smothered in our bed–which is also discouraged. But sleep becomes a valuable, precious, necessary commodity so inside our bed the Baby goes. Sometimes he sleeps on his father’s chest–diagonally so he can rest his cheek on a pectoral muscle and let his legs flop over the ribs. Ideally he sleeps smack in the middle of his milk supply, little fists grasping at his mother in his sleep. This is usually when I realize I have an awful wedgie that I can’t tend to because it means waking the baby. A lot of my needs are pushed aside in order to care for this baby. There a lot of little things: not being able to reach the remote, not being able to turn the page in my book, not being able to press send on an email, the list goes on and on.

Women who love being pregnant and women who claim they immediately fell in deep, satisfying love with their firstborn probably don’t really remember what it was like. Having a tiny, crying, stranger enter your life and prevent you from doing almost everything is so shocking you can’t even negotiate the reality in your head until it happens. Thus, parents are part of a secret club…the kind of club that allows you to forgive a crying infant on a plane, or in the store, or in a restaurant.