Juliacetera

"No Daysleeper" (Julia's theme)

(With apologies to Berry Buck Mills Stipe)

Jenny Lind crib, 3 a.m.
My stomach is empty again
The lights are out
My parents are snoring
Even Beaner is calm

My eyes flutter open
Time to awake
Talk about sleep - this'll get 'em

I see the day through blue eyes
My night is colored spit-up grey
No daysleeper, no daysleeper, no daysleeper

The stars and the moon are hanging outside in the sky
They try to lead me back to my dream stories

I’m the snort, the grunt awake
I’m Julia, I eat at night

I see the day through blue eyes
My night is colored spit-up grey
Don’t put me to bed
No daysleeper

I cried the other night
I can’t even say why
But that’s just because I
Haven’t yet learned speaking

I’m the snort, the grunt awake
I’m Julia, I eat at night
I see today
Don’t put me to bed
I see the day through blue eyes
My night is colored spit-up grey
No daysleeper, no daysleeper, no daysleeper

The noise machine is set to 9
For mom and dad I’ll cry and I’ll whine
The milk is calling me
So tasty
I’m no daysleeper
No daysleeper, no daysleeper, no daysleeper

Laying a Baby Down

Laying a baby down is impossible. I do it every night at least once, and often several times a day, but good lord it's an difficult task. Julia, my fourteen-week old baby daughter, is, as they say, "not a good sleeper." I used to think that sleeping was like falling down: everybody does it, and in mostly the same way. Sure, insomniacs have some problems, but that's a detail. Julia's proven me wrong. She doesn't like to sleep, and especially doesn't like going to sleep. Since she's just over three months old, she can't yet have one of the meltdowns for which toddlers are famous, and I hope she never does. It's hard enough already.

Every evening, after Julia nurses and starts drowsing in an immensely cute way, I take her from my wife, Shannon, and head upstairs. I walk up our creaky stairs very slowly. The room's already set up with a dim light, the right blankets laid out in the crib, a humming white-noise machine, et cetera. I have to sit just so in the rocking chair in order to keep the squeaking to a minimum. Julia's making little groans and cries now, having been wrested away from mom. I turn her so she's sitting in my lap, facing the mostly-dark room, and start rocking gently. One of my arm's around her fat little Buddha belly, the other's along her left side as a kind of brace.

After about five minutes of backing and forthing, Julia quiets down and relaxes. After ten, she's slumping into my left arm, more limp than not. I listen for her breathing, and if it's steady and deep, I slowly tilt my torso so she slides to her left, down my arm, until I can bring my right hand around and under her butt while simultaneously putting my left hand under her head. If all goes well, she'll rustle a little but end up lying on my legs, her head at my knees. Rock rock rock for another five minutes until any tension created by the vertical-to-horizontal shift has dissipated. Slowly, I slide forward in the chair and then very gradually stand up. Julia's now awkwardly but trustingly being held out in front of me. I take several minutes to cover the five feet to the crib, trying to shield her from the bedside light that's now behind us.

When I finally get to the crib, I turn 180 degrees and bend from the waist so that I can put her down the right way. Her feet have to touch first, making her legs relax and flop down at about the same time her little hands, usually clenched and dangling beneath her, touch the mattress. At a gravity-defying speed, I lower her all the way down. She usually startles when her back touches, throwing her arms and legs back up into the air.

That shock fades quickly, though, and then I start slowly sliding my hands out from underneath her, one finger at a time. I try to get my right hand out first, so that I can use it to pull her blanket up onto her torso and then rest that hand on her chest while extracting my left hand from beneath her head and neck. Slide slide slide and it's free. Now I have to stand there for five minutes, my hand on her chest, while she settles into deeper sleep. Unless something startles her, in which case she might wake up and I have to scoop her up, retreat to the rocking chair, and start over. When she's definitely asleep, I walk slowly and lightly back across the room and down the creaking old-house stairs. Turn the baby monitor on, and I have anywhere from ten minutes to five hours before tending to her again.