Some babies are the spitting image of one of their parents. They look like little shrunken versions of their mom or dad. The other day I was browsing through Facebook (one of my new hobbies is looking at pictures of the babies and kids of people I went to high school with) and found these photographs of one of my old boyfriends’ baby daughter. She looks so much like him that it’s almost like a photo of his head has been superimposed on a baby’s body.

When Nate was born all the nurses at the hospital said he looked like his dad. My brother calls him “Little Graham.” Everybody says that Nate looks just like his dad. I can’t disagree with them. He definitely has a lot of Graham in him. He has his body type. And his eyebrows.

Every once in awhile I catch a little glimpse of myself in Nate’s face. Maybe it’s the shape of his lips, or the expression he wears when he’s listening intently. Hardly anyone ever says that he looks like me at all. I don’t mind…it’s not like a lack of my characteristics in his face call into question the fact that I am his mother. I was there when he was born! He’s definitely mine. And if he looks more like his dad than he looks like me, that’s okay because I sure like his dad a whole lot.

I’ve been looking through some of my baby pictures, trying to find one that shows any kind of resemblance between Nate and I. So far I haven’t had much luck.

Me.

I finally saw a picture of Graham as an infant, and there isn’t a whole lot of resemblance in that photo, either. I guess Nate is a fairly even blend of us both.

I was pleasantly surprised the other day, when a woman I met on a playdate said immediately upon seeing Nathan, “Oh, he looks just like you!” Now granted, this woman had never met Graham so she had no basis for comparison.

Still, I’ll take it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that motherhood and sleep are incompatible.

I have one friend who has a new baby almost exactly the same age as Nate, and this friend’s baby has been sleeping through the night pretty much since he came home from the hospital. She kids around and says he’s just lazy, but I know she’s just trying to make me feel better about Nate’s sleeping patterns.

I have another friend who had a new baby about a month ago, and this friend also has two other kids who began to sleep through the night around twelve or fourteen weeks.

I keep hearing people tell me, “It’ll get better,” or “He’ll get there soon,” or “You should nap when he does.”

All of these sentences kind of make me want to scream. I know it will get better. He won’t be a ten year old who wakes up every three hours to nurse. I know he’ll get there. All babies eventually figure out the mysteries of sleep and the nights of interrupted slumber become a distant memory for moms and dads.

But in the middle of the night, when I’ve had the longest stretch of sleep I’ll get that night (three measley hours) and Nathan won’t go back to sleep because his tummy is troubling him or whatever else is preventing him from falling back to sleep…when it’s been days, weeks, months now, since I’ve had any real quality rest, when the tears begin to fall and I begin to envision walking away from the house just to find a bed somewhere dark and quiet…that’s when I know it’s time to ask for help.

Like I did last night.

Desperation began to set in so I put Nate back into his crib. I went back into our bedroom and woke up Graham. I told him I needed help. I was beginning to lose it a little. I was exhausted. Without a word he left our room to tend to our son so I could get some rest, shutting the door behind him.

I felt awful. Guilty. Sorry. Like I had that one night in the hospital when our nurse took Nate, screaming, from our room so a sleep-deprived new mom could cry herself to sleep.

Thanks, Graham. I know it’s hard for you, too, when neither Nate nor I are sleeping well. Thanks for being on our team.

Graham and I started prenatal classes run by our hospital this week. I was really proud of Graham for coming to the classes because I know he wasn’t particularly looking forward to going to them. I’m not exactly sure why, but it doesn’t matter…it ended up being a good experience for us both.

In the first class the instructor showed us (six couples) cut-away pictures of female anataomy, non-preggers and then progressively preggers, which illustrated with incredible clarity just why I’ve been having all of this heartburn. Turns out my stomach is actually somewhere up around my neck.

We also learned the signs of pre-labour and labour and how to tell the difference between them. At the end of that portion of the session, our instructor asked, “So, what are some of the ways you can tell that labour’s going to be taking place soon?”

I was never so proud of Graham as I was in the next moment, the moment he embraced the experience of childbirth education, the moment he perked up, asking enthusiastically and with much confidence, “THE PLUG?”

Yes, Graham has acknowledged, verbally even, the concept of the mucous plug. Good job, honey!

When we left the building, we both agreed that the class was pretty good, and Graham admitted that he learned a few things he hadn’t known before, which was great, fantastic really. All I know is that hearing my husband nearly shout the word “plug” in a birthing class is about the best $120 I’ve ever spent.

Graham and I have been spending our evenings lately working around the house together. It’s been nice, spending this time together actually doing something as opposed to parking our butts on the couch. Actually, come to think of it, we don’t really park our butts on the couch that often. Graham has stuff to do in the evenings and I’m usually doing laundry or puttering around online, reading and writing. I guess the difference is that lately we’ve been making a discernable difference in how certain parts of the house look and function.

It all comes down to one concept, really: NESTING.

You see…the office needs to become a spare room again, because with a newborn in the house, there may be a need for Graham to sleep somewhere other than our bed on occasion, what with the getting up at 6 in the morning and whatnot. So we’re moving the officey stuff into the basement, which means Graham’s “man room” and “tool dumping area” in the basement is no more.

He’s actually been really awesome about this displacement that’s happening. I asked him the other night if he felt funny about having to move his tools and things out into the garage, but he said he didn’t. He’s willing to make the changes because the baby is coming into our lives. Sometimes it’s amazing to me that the same man who dances regularly across the kitchen floor to the music that is only in his head, can also be this level-headed, mature and practical about other things.

So far we’ve moved my big IKEA bookcase from what used to be the office into the basement rec room and made a nice little area in one corner for toys and books. Tonight my desk will go down into the basement, and then there will be space in the spare room for the armoire that is currently in our bedroom. This needs to be moved so that the basinette will fit into the bedroom.

Next up: tackling the crawl space under the basement stairs and organizing the storage room.

I’m pretty sure that this is why God invented label makers.

“Do you mind barbecuing the hamburgers?” I asked Graham when he got home from work yesterday.

“Not at all, I’m just going to grab a shower first.”

It turns out, he really needn’t have bothered.

Do you really think that spray bottle was necessary, sweetie?