I remember what sleep feels like... I think

THE number one topic among new parents is sleep, and for good reason. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of your life that gets totally changed when you have a baby. At first it doesn’t seem so bad, you kind of get used to it and it amazes you how long you can go getting four hours of sleep a night. Sleep deprivation was funny at first because we spent most of our time giggling like school girls at a slumber party. But like a little river that wears away a canyon as it persistently flows, the lack of sleep catches up to you. It’s not even the actual amount of sleep either, it’s the fact that you never get an uninterrupted stretch that lasts longer than a couple hours. I am a very light sleeper, so I end up waking up every time Riley cries, even if its Megan that gets out of bed to feed her. And unlike the pre-child days, there is no time when you can catch up.
I didn’t really notice the effects at first, but I found I couldn’t remember much anymore, like what I had done on a project the day before or a conversation two days previous. Luckily the people in my lab haven’t realized this and begun to exploit it (yeah, you agreed to take on that entire project the other day), but for someone who’s job centers around memory, attention to detail and problem solving, it didn’t take long before I realized I wasn’t getting done half of what I used to in a given period of time. Then came the little things like the day I put my watch on upside-down and couldn’t figure out what time it was for a morning, or when I spent an hour looking for a memory stick that was sticking out of the front of my computer. And the sad thing is that Megan does the feedings after 1:00 am, so I am only dealing with a third of the night shift.
Undoubtedly, we will soon be sleeping for longer stretches as Riley grows a bit more and adjusts to sleeping more at night than randomly throughout the day. We will likely look back and laugh at how we got through this part of the experience… if we can remember it.