Facts They Never Told You #1

So this addition is the things no one ever bothered to tell you about kids until it's too late. You know, like when your wife is in labor, and they say, "Oh, by the way..." and they lay some horrible fate that will inevitably occur at some point in your tenure as parent. OR, even worse, something happens, and you are simply floored by events. Then when you tell someone with kids, they say, "Yep. Probably should have warned you about that."

These facts will be twofold in purpose: one, to give you all the facts you can in order to truly decide if children are worth it if you don't have any; two, for those of you with kids to say, "Yeah! Someone should have told me that!"

So here is fact #1:

You. Don't. Sleep. Like at all for the first four months. People KIND OF tell you this, because they'll say, "Oh, the baby will need to be fed about every three hours at first."

You think, "Well, that kind of sucks, but hey, at least I'll sleep about 2 1/2 hours here, 2 1/2 hours there. We'll get through it."

Uhhhh, yeah, well, the kid doesn't go back to sleep right away most of the time. So a typical three hour period goes something like this:

2 am: Baby wakes up. Hungry.
2:02 am: You shove the wife out of the bed to go get the baby, since you are physically unable to feed it (just kidding here...there were times I fed by bottle, or at least got the kid--but it IS tempting)
2:30 am: Feeding done. Baby goes back down to bed, you collapse in bed.
2:30 am, 12 seconds: Baby starts crying. Does not want to sleep.
2:31 am-3:15 am: Repeat last two steps.
3:15 am: Baby falls asleep. For real.
3:30 am: You finally fall back asleep.
4:30 am: Baby wakes up again. Cycle repeats.

Time elapsed: 2 1/2 hours
Time slept: 1 hour

Multiply this by an average night, you may sleep 3-4 hours total. In pieces.

If you want to know what that's like, take 4 Benadryl, but force yourself to stay awake. Yeah. It's like that. With the hallucinations.

Tip #2 next week involves the effect of this lack of sleep. It's freaking awesome.