Being Nice

Ben and I haven't really slept in the last eight weeks. I recognize we may not really sleep for the next eighteen years. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing; after a while your brain acclimates to running on a half-empty tank, your friends and family learn to decode your slurred speech, and you begin to accept that nights (like most other things in your life) are no longer your own. But something else happens when you and your partner are not getting the rest you really need... You get a little mean. It took me a while to recognize that the snippy tones, the defensive replies, the way we both started taking just about everything extremely personally were all the result of our extreme exhaustion. Adding a baby to the mix is a hard transition. We're asked to sacrifice in ways that I have started to doubt any of us are truly prepared for, and in our (personal) parental evolution Ben and I seem to be struggling to make the time to care for ourselves, and maybe even cut each other the necessary slack. I don't think this issue will be resolved when Charlie learns to sleep through the night. I imagine this will become a constant in our lives; we're going to have to keep doing our best to remember that we're on each others side. Until we get the hang of this practice, I'm trying to remember an piece of advice I read a while back: when you're feeling frustrated with your partner try (before you say anything unkind) to remember something truly wonderful they did in the past. It's a really simple exercise, but I sort of think it does wonders. I like to remember when Ben drove through a snowstorm to spend Christmas day with all of us.