I Will Be The Monster Slayer In This House

I always knew that Gary might not be much help during the night since he is a horribly deep sleeper, and has those pesky night terrors I've blogged about before. Now that Brynn is here, it’s all confirmed. The first few nights we were home from the hospital, we each took turns staying up four hours with her during the night. We were just too scared to put her down and wanted to bond with her too. I've heard we’re not the only ones who have done this with their first baby. :) Anyway, after a few hours of sleep the second night we were home, I came out in the living room to find Gary sound asleep in the recliner with Brynn laying on his chest. Ah, I freaked out! If she would have wiggled or moved the wrong way, she would have gone crashing to the floor! Or, if Gary would have had a night terror, who knows what he would have done. From then on, I wasn't too sure about leaving him up with her in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, we graduated onto having her in our room in the pack 'n' play. One night she was sleeping a little longer than usual and I was feeling the need to breastfeed. I didn't want to wake her up so I got up and went to the nursery to pump. Gary came stumbling in and said Brynn was crying and asked if I wanted to feed her. I asked him to bring her in and change her diaper and by then I'd be ready to take her and feed her. I don’t know what I was thinking. Looking back, I realized when he was talking to me his eyes weren't even open. That should have been my first clue. He came stumbling into the room carrying her way out in front of him. His eyes were still closed and he almost hit her head on the door on the way in. He was picking his feet way up in the air like he was in a marching band wearing cement shoes. I sat there in shock for a minute and just stared at them with my mouth hanging open because it hit me that he was probably still asleep. He managed to change her diaper and then handed her to me and went back to bed.

I went back into the bedroom with her to feed her in bed. When I came in, he was sitting up and I thought maybe he was awake now. He appeared to be looking at us. Then he started to slump forward. I thought he was going to fall over and fall out of bed so I was trying to get him to lie down while I was feeding her. This was not an easy task and he wasn't budging. Then he started talking:

Gary said, “Did you see him?”

I said, “Who?”

He replied, “He went that way...... through the grass.”

I didn't say anything. I tried again to get him to lie down.

Then he said, “If you hurry, you can catch him.” Once he was done with his little statement, I was finally able to get him to lie down.

Yeeeeaaaaah, that was the last time he’s been “up” during the night. That was the first week Brynn was home. I have decided it is not even worth it to rely on him at night since I can’t guarantee he’d even be awake. (And he never hears her during the night anyway).

On Mother’s Day weekend we had another “episode”. I was up early feeding Brynn, and then decided to come back to bed when she fell asleep. Within 10 minutes of laying her down, she started fussing again. Ugh! I had just started to drift off. I slowly started to get up but Gary jumped up, started getting dressed and said, “I’ll get her.” He was acting in his tell-tale “I’m sleeping” way so I asked him if he was awake. He said he was. I asked if he was sure and he got kind of mad and said, “YES, I’m AWAKE!” Since I was exhausted, I believed him and quickly fell back to sleep.

Later that day, Gary tells me: “So, this morning I woke up out here in the recliner holding Brynn but I didn't know how I got there.” He didn't remember getting up or telling me he was awake or picking her up or anything.

So, now I have to be extremely careful and pretty much always get up with her to make sure she is in the hands of someone who is actually awake. I'm thinking that when Brynn is older and has a bad dream, (and if she’s like her mom and dad, she’s in for some doozies) I will be the one to get up and comfort her, scare away monsters in the closet, etc. After all, her dad would probably just scare her even worse by asking her if she can see the person standing in the closet. That’s what he does to me.