Sometimes I don’t know which is worse—being forced out of bed to take care of a screaming Livia at 4:00 a.m. and then having several hours of time for reading and writing, or being allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m. and having no time for my hobbies. Of course, sometimes I can say for sure which is worse. Those are the days when I’m so sleep-deprived that almost everything ticks me off, and though I have time to write, my mental capacity is so low that the words probably don’t even make sense.
This morning Livia woke me at 6:45. Not bad. Marshall got up shortly after that. Now that I’m just about done with all the diapering, dressing, feeding, and cleaning, it is just about time to wake up my husband so that I can go to work. No time for my activities. After a week of getting near-normal quantities of sleep, I’m feeling pretty good, and so those days of absolute exhaustion seem like ancient history. They have an almost romantic quality in my poor, damaged memory. “Ah,” I think to myself. “Those were the days!”
Whichever situation is worse, they’re both bad. It just isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice sleep in order to have time for my hobbies. But, as the old saying goes, “If wishes were nannies, mommies would write.”