Sleep study
Ok, so Tracey is gone for the night. She is participating in a sleep study (she’s been having trouble sleeping for any length of time). It’s sort of a strange thing, though because they were planning to wake her up between 5 and 6 a.m, which to me isn’t so much a sleep study, as a cruel way to torture someone who hasn’t had a night without listening for her baby’s cry in 21 months.
Nevertheless, we (and by “we” I mean mainly her) got Ethan down to bed around 9 p.m. so she could be there for 9:45, and we’re all just hoping that Ethan sleeps through the night.
Now I have to start out by saying that I’m fully supportive of this study. I fully hope that they are able to help figure out why she can’t sleep better, and I hope the answer doesn’t involve me moving into the guest room. But I also have to say that I am absolutely terrified that Ethan is going to wake up, and I am not going to do a thing for him. This isn’t entirely unreasonable, as Ethan is currently cutting a new tooth and trying to get over the last of a cold that has been hanging on.
Tracey has the magic touch when it comes to getting him back to sleep. He usually nurses for a few minutes (yeah yeah I know he’s a bit old to still be nursing, but you try getting weight on a kid who’s allergic to dairy and can’t stand to eat because he’s constantly teething) and will go back to sleep pretty quickly.
Alright... but what happens if he wakes up tonight?
I have joked that I can sleep through just about anything, so it would only be Dad and the beagles who would suffer. The joke, of course, is that there is very little chance that I’ll be sleeping tonight. I might very well sleep through Ethan waking up, but then again even if I woke up, there’s little I could actually do anyway.
See, I had no doubt that Ethan would wake up.
And I was right.
About 2:10 a.m. I heard him (it’s about 2:20 a.m. now). What am I doing up? I don’t know, but here I am. I have already watched the ring and am now watching Scream. Scary movies? Well yeah, but nothing compares to this. I’m here and pretty much useless.
There was an episode of Mad About You (the best TV show ever for showing what married life was really like) called “The Conversation” which was a 22-minute single-shot episode (no commercial interruptions) which showed them outside their baby’s door, listening to her cry.
I found that episode to be heart-breaking, because you could feel what they were going through. That was several years ago, long before I had any idea what it was really like. I doubt that episode will ever be on again because I doubt any syndication group is going to show it like that. Which is too bad, because it is some of the best acting I have ever seen on television.
Then again as awful as those 22-minutes were, it was still a sitcom, where everyone’s problems are over in a half-hour.
It’s 2:41 now, and he’s not back to sleep yet.