Think back to when you were a new parent, up at all hours with your baby and hardly getting any sleep at all. Having trouble remembering? Yeah, me too. It's all kind of a blur. But there is one incident I remember with mortifying clarity.
Just a few days after giving birth, I was so sleep-deprived and disoriented that when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I forgot to lift the toilet lid. And I sat down. And I peed all over the damn place. There was this split second when I thought, "Wait, something here feels amiss -- " but my foggy brain took too long to figure out which crucial step in my bathroom practice I had forgotten.
At least I know I'm not the only one. Okay, none of my friends admitted to this particular bathroom disaster. But they will cop to other crazy, sleep-deprived antics -- anonymously, of course.
A friend with a baby who is still just a few months old describes a late-night diapering disaster:
I have just successfully taped the new diaper to the old one. Inadvertently ... it was in the dark and I was half asleep! I was like, "Why is he so heavy and bulky all of a sudden?"
Here's how a friend of mine describes losing her wits with her third baby.
I was ultra paranoid carrying my third newborn around in a carrier and setting it down. I was certain I would lose him -- I wore a sign around my neck that said, "REMEMBER THE BABY" for about six weeks until I was used to having a third kid. Sleep deprivation makes you insane.
Some of us forget what the refrigerator is for.
I used to put strange things in the fridge that didn't belong there. Like a box of cereal one time.
While other moms make the mistake of Shopping While Exhausted.
Every Christmas I have a reminder not to online shop while sleep-deprived. I meant to buy the new baby a matching stocking but bought one in different colors. So we have one odd stocking on our fireplace (still).
Here's some late-night fun with exploding bottles.
One time when my son was around 4 months old or so, I went into his room with a bottle in the middle of the night. It was one of those with the liner, where you have to push the excess air out before feeding the baby. I warmed it up, put the lid on, and then went to push the air out -- but it was REALLY stiff, which should've tipped me off that something wasn't right.
But instead, in my sleep-deprived state, I kept on pushing and the damn thing exploded all over his bedroom. He was screaming his head off in his crib (my husband was sleeping ... imagine that) -- and by the time I cleaned it all up and warmed another bottle, he had fallen back asleep.
You learn to sleep whenever/wherever/however you can.
I fell asleep, literally hanging upside down. I guess I was punchy from the lack of sleep, but I dangled my head upside down, facing outward while laying on my couch, and, yeah. Just fell asleep. That's big for me, considering I need complete darkness and a fan on to sleep normally.
And then there's this:
I saw spiders crawling up our windows.
Yup. Spiders. Haven't we all?
What strange things have you done as a sleep-deprived new parent of a baby?
Image via JGI/Jamie Grill/Blend Images/Corbis