A few weeks ago I got a Baby Center weekly update on the status of Ian. It told me that as a nine-month-old he would not necessarily do well with travel and would need lots of down time.

Cue the whirlwind of taking the baby to three conferences in two weeks. He went up to Oswego to hang out with librarians for a few days then flew over to Manhattan to cavort with his toddler cousins and 2000 bloggers at BlogHer. And this week we went up to DC for an archivist conference and our company outing of a Nationals baseball game. He’s been a trooper through all of this but not without a few hiccups.

Yesterday, because of various circumstances, Ian only had two twenty minute naps all day. I tried nursing him and rocking him to sleep at the baseball game in an empty party suite but there was still too much going on. He went to sleep at 10:30 that night.

And woke up screaming at 11:55pm, 12:05am, 2am, 2:30am, 3:45am, 3:50am, 6am and 6:30am before actually getting up for the day at 7:30am.

I use the term “woke up” but that’s not quite accurate. He would get all stiff-armed and flail around the bed crying like you’d stabbed him, but not actually be awake. He would settle back down within a few minutes each time, sometimes after walking around with him, but each time Rich and I both were ripped out of sleep to “OMG THE BABY IS CRYING WHAT’S WRONG HOLY SHIT MAKE IT STOP”. Repeat each hour or so. One of my Google searches at 4am called them night terrors and I can see how they get the name because I can attest to waking up pretty terrified the first few times he did it. Ian, of course, wakes up perky and cheerful the next morning.

My father tells this joke about a pair of golfers betting on a game but one getting “two gotchas“. And much like that golfer waiting for the second gotcha, each time I fell back asleep I was just waiting for the next panicked scream to wake me up.

This week should be pretty low key for him and I’m hoping the return of routine will help him out of this screaming night terror phase. I can feel myself getting threadbare from this last week of sporadic sleep.

When he’s not screaming, he is pretty adorable when he sleeps.

I have so much to tell you, but it’s late and I’m super tired. The boy is developing quite a personality and that is both very fun and very exhausting.

So for now you can just watch this video of him learning how to “cluck” his “teeth” (gums) and us all joining in.

Amazingly our son went to sleep at 8:30 this evening, which is unheard of, so I’ve found myself with some free time to play on the computer.

As I was sorting through songs to make a mix, Rich asked if a particular song was a cover. He swore I had made him a mix with the song on it but it was a woman singing. After a bit he laughed and realized that the only time he’s heard the song is when I’m singing it to Ian and this was the first he’d heard of the original.

That inspired me to share some of the gems I’ve been digging up. These are all songs I use to sing babies to sleep. Very few are actual children’s songs but most of them can be sung in a soothing manner.

Let me know which songs are your favorite or if you have other atypical lullabies in your own repertoire.

The first song, Trouble, is the song Rich didn’t recognize. I’ve sung that to babies for almost a decade now. Babies can be “so fat their shoes don’t fit on [their] feet” so I figure it’s appropriate. Here’s the list of songs below, but you can click on the link to listen to the complete mix.

Hush Little Baby

1. Trouble (Little Feat)
2. Bird On The Wire (Leonard Cohen)
3. Everybody’s Missing the Sun (The Gourds)
4. House at Pooh Corner (Maria Sangiolo)
5. Hi-Lilli, Hi-Lo (Leslie Caron)
6. Tennessee Waltz (Hem)
7. Love At The Five And Dime (Nanci Griffith)
8. All Of Me (Willie Nelson)
9. Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole)
10. Love Will Come To You (Indigo Girls)

My father has a saying (he has lots of sayings) that there are three things that you cannot understand unless you experience them firsthand. One is war. The second is sex. And the third is depression. Married just after boot camp before heading to Vietnam, he got his first two experiences early on in life, but it was many years before he felt the pains of depression. It was then he could suddenly understand why others just couldn’t “get over it”.

After our conference in DC last weekend, we stopped by my friend Becca’s house to see her and her beautiful new baby girl. Her baby was born in mid-April and she was due to go back to work on July 1. As we chatted on the floor to the sound of baby coos, she lamented her concerns about leaving her little butternut.

And as I sat there looking at her baby, I desperately tried to remember what my life was like when Ian was that small. I have a hard time remembering what it was like when we had to cradle his head as we held him or when he couldn’t just wake up and crawl all over us in the bed. There was a time when he weighed less than 20 pounds and still fit in the car seat bucket but that just seems like a lifetime ago.

I remember when we first brought Ian home and I was writing about various issues with nursing or sleeping or diapers or other truisms to newborn parenthood. Several other mothers would suggest things that seemed crazy to me. I now understand that they were just like I am now, trying to offer ideas but losing track of what we’d tried when, mostly because all those first months are a big blur. One thing no one forgot, though, was the feeling of having to leave their baby for the first time.

So I’d like to amend Daddy’s saying and add a fourth thing. I’d say that you can’t truly understand the storm of emotions that comes with being a mother of a newborn unless you’ve lived in that body. Even sitting in Becca’s living room, I could only imagine the heartache she was feeling in anticipation of going back to work and I’d lived it not six months ago. That period was hard on Rich and I see now how hard it must have been. Because intellectually he knew I was having a hard time but there’s no way he could really get how physically painful it was for me. And there’s little anyone can do to help. We all just have to weather through the phase and make the best of it.

When I got my prescription for Zoloft, the doctor told me I didn’t have postpartum depression. She said I had “situational adjustment with mixed emotions”. That diagnosis is the understatement of the year. I think I’ll be in a “situational adjustment” for years to come, but at least now I have a better grasp on my emotions.

So I know what you’re going through, Becca, and my heart aches for you just like yours does every day at work. Try not to cry too much, but don’t worry if you do. Spend every free minute you have holding that beautiful baby girl of yours, smelling her skin and putting your heartbeat next to hers. And soon hopefully those will be the only memories that will stick with you from this transition.

I went to my parents’ house with Ian yesterday and Dad happened to be home as well. He’s been working on rental property a lot lately and getting home very late.

But last night he was in a particularly good mood. He picked up Ian and they were swinging around and making motor boat noises and tickling and having a grand time. It was fun to watch them because when Ian was a newborn Daddy didn’t interact with him much or want to hold him. And when he did he just fretted about how fragile newborns are.

After a bit, Dad said, “We should take him to the hospital nursery to show all the new fathers how good it’s going to be in just a few months. Cause this is pretty great.”

Seeing my father smile after so many months of fretting and depression was pretty great too.