Nigthtime Fears

After the first week of night times with Aya, I have to admit I was really afraid of them. As it got later in the day and the sun set, I became increasingly anxious about how the night would go. I was always very tired by this point in the day, and desperately wanted to know that I would be able to sleep, even if it would only be for short stretches. Before Aya, I was used to knowing that my day would eventually "end," and that I would have time to sit with my husband and wind down with him each evening. It didn't matter what kind of day I was having at school because I knew there "was a light at the end of the tunnel" so to speak. I would get to sit and enjoy a dinner of chicken and avocado, munch on my daily ritual snack-banana chips, and get my feet rubbed before drifting off to sleep. I wasn't prepared for what it would be like to have a baby at home who didn't yet have any sort of routine or predictability. I didn't know how long the evening hours would stretch and when Aya would finally "settle in" and sleep for her first stretch of the night. The days were hard, and I think they were even harder for me because I didn't know when they would "end" and relaxing would commence.

For the first several weeks, I never did really feel like I got to relax before going to sleep. In fact, the evenings became the trickiest time of the day. We were the most tired, and Aya was the fussiest. It seemed like the only thing that would comfort her was nursing, and so that is what I did, every hour or so, until finally, sometimes as late as 11, Aya would be so worn out from screaming her way to the next feeding, that she could be put down and stay asleep. At that moment, tired and cranky, often very irritated, even angry, I would go to bed, not because I really wanted to, or had had time to wind down or reflect on the goodness of the day, but because I felt rushed to sleep knowing that the window might be short.

I will say that this period of time passed, and only in retrospect, I can say it passed quickly. In time, Aya became calmer in the evenings and content with our special evening time routine--a bath, a gentle massage and a long comforting nurse before she entered into dreams. We started to know and trust our little girl actually would fall asleep each evening. I could lay her down, leave her room, and enter into our kitchen to finish the dinner preparations knowing that it was now our time wind down and put the day into a capsule of gratitude before bed. The time where I knew my day would eventually come to a close peacefully did come, and I remember the first time it happened. I felt like celebrating and we did. We sat down on our back patio and grilled some steak. I didn't know I would ever have a sense of normalcy again, and there it was, sitting under the slowly darkening sky, in my own life, with our own baby girl snoozing inside. And she looked so beautiful and she was ours.