Why We're All Just Waiting for the World to End

No, not in the Mayan sense. But for parents, "doomsday" is always just around the corner. I never understood this before I had a kid of my own, but as parents, WE'RE ALWAYS WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP. Hell, we're just waiting for the first shoe to drop. Because those first few months, when Baby would close his eyes for a blessed half-hour (or even a couple of minutes), and the house would go quiet, and we'd get even a couple of minutes of reprieve from the constant feeding and diapering and crying that comes with a newborn, well, those precious minutes were more valuable to us than a whole lot of Apple stock or a million hits on our cat's Youtube video. And after our little one got sleep trained, and we learned what a twelve-hour stretch of "Baby sleeping peacefully in his crib" could be like, we'd do anything — and I mean just about anything — to ensure he did that the next night. And the next. And the next. 

Here's the thing: my baby sleeps through the night now — he's 16 months; if he didn't, I would actually have lost my mind by now. He naps fairly consistently. He can go on a trip and not totally lose his shit (operative word being totally). He's pretty adaptable now — and he still goes back to his old routine after we mess with it. And yet, Ethan and I are still terrified beyond all reason that he won't. We're still completely convinced and disproportionately afraid that any deviation from his schedule will cause irreparable harm to this extremely precarious routine we've cobbled together after all those sleepless nights. Why do we always think disaster is going to strike? Because we're suffering from a kind of baby-induced, sleep training-induced PTSD.* The idea of going back to the beginning again is so scary that we still walk on tiptoes while Baby is napping and we still view his white noise machine as the greatest invention since the ipad. We think the world is going to end ALL THE TIME, when, in reality — and much like the end of the Mayan calendar, or Y2K** — it never does. (I will still continue to not flush the toilet while my baby is napping. I swear to you, that child has bionic ear drums).

*A brilliant friend of mine had this stunningly accurate insight the other night. I am stealing it here. (I also fully acknowledge that parents don't have real PTSD which is obviously a very serious condition not to be taken lightly. What we parents do actually have is a condition where the sound of our babies crying-slash-screaming in the middle of the night causes us to make all kinds of unrealistic bargains with God, ourselves, or our spouses. These bargains are quite problematic when we wake up. It's why we aren't going to have Child #2 until I'm 47).

**Doesn't that make you feel old?

xox,

Rebecca