I thought it was all getting better.  Easier.  David had been repeatedly telling me that it would get better, it would get easier, for months now.  It had become my mantra.  It will get better.  It will get easier.  I found myself saying it through my clenched teeth during those really difficult moments.

Then it happened.  The colic stopped.  The incessant nighttime crying stopped.  The storm had passed.  I could see the light.  I suddenly just knew when Liam was tired, and we’d snuggle on the bed while he sleepily ate and fell into Morpheus’s arms.  Occasionally, those naps stretched out past the forty minute mark.  Once, it lasted two-and-a-half hours, and I may have just about had a tiny orgasm. 

Then, when we were least expecting it, the sky clouded over again.  Apparently, it is monsoon season, gusting winds and all.  For the past week and a half, the evenings have been a total nightmare.  The baby who had been peacefully drifting off to sleep on his own after our adventure in swaddling decided that 8pm wasn’t his bedtime anymore.  Nor was nine, or seven.  It was never.  He did not like it in the dark nor in the light.  He did not like it in the bed, nor the bassinet.  Screw the bedtime story, he knows what that means.  Don’t even think of setting him down, and you think you’re going to just nurse him off to sleep?  Hah, good luck woman!

The evenings were my time.  The time when I could work on that research paper which is getting nowhere and needs to get somewhere fast.  The time when I could interact with the one other person I see on a regular basis, the one that can actually hold up his end of a conversation.

Now those evenings consist of two completely exhausted, frazzled adults whose interaction mostly consists of phrases like “What is wrong with him?!” and “Oh my god, take him, I can’t do this anymore.”  The howling baby isn’t the only one in tears at the end of a lot of those nights.

Here’s to better days.