Sleep, uninterrupted

 

I've come to learn that the only people who advise "You should make a lot of noise while Baby is napping so Baby won't have trouble sleeping at night" are the people who live in the suburbs.

As a city dweller, that's probably the single stupidest bit of baby advice I have ever received, solicited or unsolicited. It's an old wives tale and if it were even true, it's only applicable to suburbanites living in single-family homes on a normal, residential street. Because, really, as a new mommy slash city dweller, the only thing you want to do is sleep and to keep your baby sleeping uninterrupted. FOR YOUR SANITY! 

Let me just go on a little tangent here and explain the logistics of newborn care for anyone who doesn't know. You're nursing around the clock for at least the first 8 weeks. "Nursing around the clock" means every 2 hours. But this goes by "start" time, and not when you're finished. Plus, you're not only draining your own body of nutrients and all energy so that you can nurse a tiny little being to life, then you have to burp the baby, sit him upright for 20 minutes, change diaper, and finally, rock him to sleep. This whole process can literally take 1.5 hours. If you're lucky and have an efficient feeder and the whole process went smoothly, that is.

For non-math whizzes, this equates to you being up for at least 18 out of the 24 hours in a day. The rest of your free time you spend ravenously trying to eat and pump, yea. You're lucky if you even get 3 to 4 hours of combined sleep. This goes on for two months! And forget about showering.

So, back to "keeping it noisy around the house while Baby naps." 

To those moms who feel the urge to do that, more power to you, sistas! 

Living where I do, I don't even have to try to make noise. That's the beauty of living in the city. There's plenty of it, living right off the expressway and 60 feet across an elementary school. (Yes, I know, we chose poorly, shame on us.) Until you have a baby, you never notice how loud and rumbly the semis are rolling by on your city street, how Waste Management trucks beep until they finish clearing the dumpster, how frequently car alarms go off, or how sirens whizz by once every single hour of the day. 

So, excuse me while I go cower and shudder in fear of deliberately making noise inside the house so that I don't wake my baby, or angrily shake my fist at the parents who line up in their cars for afterschool pick up and excessively press on their horns until their kid notices them, or call the cops on noisy renters next door at 3 in the morning. I don't need to deliberately "keep the house noisy" just to teach my baby a lesson, no thank you!

The funny thing is, any city dweller I've talked to understands exactly how irritating the noise factor can be, regardless whether they have kids or not. It's the people who live in the 'burbs that kinda live in a bubble, yea. God, I despise the thought of suburgatory and yet I also can't wait...