Sleepless Nights

It’s was a five year program. Five years that you are expected to eat sleep and breathe architecture. Unless you actually knew someone who was an architecture major in college I can’t really explain the lifestyle too you. Sometimes, when I tell people what I do, they say in a kind of knowing way, “Oh… I had a roommate/ boyfriend/ neighbor who was an architecture major in college.” And there are other professions that demand this type of devotion and sleeplessness. But none that pay so poorly by comparison.

Now in the field, my fellow architects reminisce about how little sleep they got in college. How many times they awoke on the cold concrete floor of the studio, or fell asleep mid-model building. It’s a right of passage. And it permeates the profession. You aren’t worthy of the title if you don’t sacrifice your mental well-being to the art. And even now, the men (because lets face it, they are mostly men) around me, half-heartedly brag about how many hours they worked overtime this week or how many days it’s been since they saw their families. I fight against that current, but it’s another story altogether.

Yes, I did have a few sleepless nights. And I certainly spent many hours working on projects in the studio. And I’ve done more than my fair share of sixty and seventy hour work weeks. In college, I only made my life harder by joining a gazillion student groups, and I just added to the ways I lost sleep. So, when I had a baby I thought I would be just fine not sleeping. I thought that I had juggled more things at once than most people did in a lifetime, and I thought that I would be just fine.

But no one prepares you for the emotional toll. And over the past few months I’ve never been so tired in my life. Not every day. But it pops up here and there, and comes in spurts. And Monday was a big spurt.

Bug was sick for the first time this weekend. And I started back to work 24 hours a week on Monday. By the end of Monday I thought my heart might break and my body might stop functioning.

BabyBug was fussy and coughing, but she didn’t have a fever and she was eating, so I didn’t really feel like I had an excuse to miss my first day back to work. Of course, I spent the whole day worrying about my baby. She’s not really that sick, but no amount of sleepless nights in college can prepare you for the combination of too little sleep and the emotional roller coaster that a new baby brings.

It was really my own fault for not being mentally prepared. We had a wonderful weekend. On Saturday night, Justin and I went on a perfect date. We went downtown and had dinner, stopped by the Home and Garden show, and caught a movie. Lily was home, safe and sound with her Grandma, and we had a blissful evening. Sunday too, was mostly uneventful. During the day Bug was coughing and sneezing. But we put a vaporizer in her room and she napped like normal. By early evening she was cranky and the cough was much worse. She nursed often and was up almost every hour Sunday night. I almost completely forgot that I had to start back to work that morning. I just keep pushing it out of my mind.

But the morning came, and I drove to work on practically no sleep, with a sick baby girl at home, feeling like the worst mother in the world. And when I arrived at work, it was as if they thought I was started back full time with a vengeance! No one stopped to think that I couldn’t possibly complete the amount of work they were giving me in a 24 hour time period. (Why would they? No one else in the office is part time.) At least I stayed busy. If I hadn’t been busy I would have lost it.

But that didn’t stop my heart from aching.