Well, I've reached the stage of pregnancy where I've stopped reading stuff about pregnancy and started reading stuff about babies and parenting. As near as I can figure, in several more weeks something horrible and medical is going to happen and at the end I'm going to have this little, tiny dependant to take care of that will be relying entirely on me for some direction in life. At least career wise, I've got this all figured out starting from Junior's first day at Air Cadets to the moment he's sitting on top of thousands of pounds of rocket fuel on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. It's those first few years that I'm less sure of.
One of the early things that I have to contend with is “getting baby into a normal sleep pattern.” You could fill several libraries with the literature written on this topic. Given that I'm writing this entry after waking at 0300 hrs, staring at the ceiling for an hour and then cleaning the bathroom cupboards and tidying the kitchen; I'm wondering if I'm really the person who ought to be pointing Junior in the correct direction of “normal” sleep patterns.
I think that it should be Evil Scientist's job. Let's compare a typical night of sleep for the both of us:
Me - Go to bed, lay there for over an hour trying to fall asleep, worrying about everything under the sun. Finally drift off but wake up 20 minutes later because of a terrifying nightmare that won't seem so terrifying when it's not dark anymore. Get up, go to the washroom. Spend another 20 minutes trying to fall asleep. Finally get there again, sleep for a couple of hours then wake up to go to the washroom again (these are pre-preg trips to the can, by the way). Fail to fall asleep again. Stare at the ceiling, get up, blog, clean house, return emails, make lists. Finally get tired again at about 0600 to 0800 hrs and sleep great until around 1100 hrs. Get up to pee again and want to sleep more but feel guilty about “sleeping the day away”. Get up.
Evil Scientist - Go to bed. Get up.
See where I'm going with this? It has to be his job because if it's mine, by the time Junior is in high school he'll end up a coffee-drinking, smoking Emo who spends his time cutting himself and writing dark poetry. You know what that leads to? Some kind of lame arts degree instead of red serge, Moose Jaw and a call sign of Snowbird 4, that's what.