Chicken With Its Head Cut Off

There's this song by The Magnetic Fields that goes "My heart's runnin' 'round like a chicken with its head cut off.  All around the barn yard fallin' in and out of love.  Poor thing's blind as a bat, gettin' up, fallin' down, gettin' uuuuuup.  Who'd fall in love with a chicken with its head cut off?"  It's as great song, and it's fun to listen to, but it gets stuck in my head rather easily.  In fact, I had this song stuck in my head the entire time I was in labor with Chubbs.  All. 27. Hours.

Not so much the whole chorus, as the "gettin' up, fallin' down, gettin' uuuuuup" part.  As annoying as it got (especially after the 18-hour mark), it was how I got myself to keep "getting up" after every contraction, something that got harder and harder the longer I labored.  My midwife was of the mind that in some ways a long labor isn't necessarily a bad thing: it helps you keep things in perspective later on when your child won't, oh, let's say, sleep.

Let me pause here and say that I hate lessons.  They really irk me.  It's like the Universe is saying, "I told you so.  I told you there's a reason for certain life experiences."  I'd like to give the Universe a good, swift kick in the shins.  But sometimes the Universe is right.  Grumble, grumble.  So there you are Universe; you were right.  Let's not make a habit out of it.

Anyway, I often think of my long labor (as well as the week leading up to the long labor when Chubbs was overdue and I wanted to stab forks in my eyes and Chris feared for his life) when I'm having a particularly rough time with Chubbs.  Like today.  I spent, count 'em, 73 minutes - that's an hour and thirteen minutes - trying to get Chubbs back to sleep after he woke up in the middle of a nap.

Ok, lemme clarify.  I had no trouble getting him back to sleep.  What I did have trouble with was getting him back into his crib to continue his nap.  I tried five (yeah, you heard me) times to put him down, and every single time he immediately woke up and got upset.  After the fifth time I just gave up, which came back to haunt me this evening when Chubbs got really crabby and started sounding like a constipated cat when he cried.  One can only take so much.

Anyone with a child knows how freaking annoying it is when said child won't sleep.  Not only are they crabby because they're tired,  but you have no time for yourself because you spend all your time trying to get them to sleep.  This has been going on for a few weeks for Chubbs and me, and I'm really ready for it to be over.  I need sleep.  And as exasperating as it is to continually have to pick him up, get him back to sleep, put him in his crib, and repeat, I know (hope?) that it will eventually come to an end, and in a few years I will wish that my little boy would let me hold him while he sleeps.  But in the meantime, I just keep reminding myself that I have to keep getting up.