• Age: 39
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Number and ages of children: one little boy L, aged 5.5 months
• Relationship status: married to my husband, S
• Occupation: senior manager in big tech
• Current parenting stage: infant
• Is there anything specific happening this week?

This week, we started week three of sleep training our 5.5-month-old son. After the 4-month sleep regression we saw a real increase in night wakings, making it overwhelming especially as I’ve had to return to work. I’m easing back into work part-time while trying to continue breastfeeding and somehow maintain a vague sense of self. My husband, S, is currently studying from home, so we’re tag-teaming baby shifts between meetings, feeds, naps, and increasingly desperate Googling.

• How would you describe your parenting style?

I’ve realized I approach parenting the same way I’ve approached most things in my adult life: through research. I’ve spent the last 15 years making work decisions based on data, and now I’m trying to do the same for parenting. I’m reading books, listening to podcasts, obsessively Googling baby sleep, and trying to figure out how to raise a confident, secure, happy little person while also trying to keep myself happy and healthy.

• How much support do you have around you?

Some, we have friends in Houston but they’re all 45+ minutes away and have young children of their own. But if we needed help, they’d be there. My husband’s dad lives with us but he’s in a wheelchair and needs more help than he provides. My parents are living in my home country but I talk to my mum daily and she provides a lot of moral support.

• How has parenthood changed you?

Motherhood has consumed almost every part of my identity. I love L more than anything, but there’s definitely grief in how much of myself feels gone.

• What do you miss most about pre-kid life?

I miss the alone time. Before having a baby, I used to love getting pedicures — an entire hour where nobody needed anything from me and I didn’t have to think or talk or multitask. Now my shower is basically the only alone time I get, and some days it lasts less than five minutes and mostly involves washing somebody else’s bodily fluids off me.

• What was the last thing you Googled about parenting:

Oh my gosh, the things I’ve googled lately and searched on reddit, reddit has been the third parent in our life for sure. Does sleep training cause long-term harm? Is grass safe for baby to put in mouth? Do silicone baby plates really start to smell after being put in the dishwasher?

• What do you wish other parents talked about more?

I’m finding not being on my phone difficult. I know that I don’t want L to be around screens and that has meant I’ve had to make a huge shift in how I spend my time. I didn’t realize how attached to my phone I was previously, just scrolling or playing games all the time.

• If you could tell new parents one honest thing, what would it be?

If I could tell new parents one honest thing, it’s this: for every low, there’s an equal or greater high waiting on the other side of it. The screaming eventually lessens (and hopefully stops but we’re not there yet). The naps improve. They smile at you from the bath. They fall asleep on your chest. They discover the dog and they smile when you get the carrier out. You survive things you genuinely thought might break you.

Also — and I say this with deep resentment — apparently you really don’t need as much sleep as you once thought you did.

Day 1

4:17 a.m. – The sounds of L crying comes through the monitor and wakes me up. I’m not sure I remember the last time I woke up independently, I’ve been waking up to screaming for the last 5.5 months – it’s hard going. A quick feed and he went straight back to sleep. I tried to do the same but man that’s hard after 4 a.m.

6:09 a.m. – We both managed to sleep a little longer and we got up for the day just after 6, not bad going. Thankfully previous me had filled the coffee maker last night so I only had to switch it on as I walked past on my way to L’s room. We recently moved him in to his own room to facilitate sleep training. I miss having him near but it is really nice to be able to be louder in our bedroom and not have to do everything in the dark and the silence after bedtime.

7:00 a.m. – We facetime Grandma as we do most mornings, despite her living in my home country I want to make sure L knows her and she also loves to see him. I wish she were closer though.

8:50 a.m. – L goes down for his nap, I’m still mostly getting him to sleep for his naps, I know I’ll have to start independent napping soon but I’m not committed to it yet. I take the opportunity to shower and have some breakfast – he sleeps for 40 mins so that’s not bad.

10:00 a.m. – We do our daily singalong. I am trying to build L’s recognition skills so every day we sing the same couple of songs, Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes, if you’re happy and you know it, and row, row row your boat. He grins now when I start to sing them which is so incredibly cute.

11:00 a.m. – Time for swim class, as we live in Houston, I was adamant that we would start L in swim classes early. He’s just starting to really get the hang of it and you can see him becoming more comfortable in the water. L falls asleep in the car on the way home but wakes up as soon as we get home, a 20-minute nap only.

1:00 p.m. – It’s my father in laws birthday so we’re heading out for a birthday lunch at his favorite seafood restaurant. We go later in the day so hopefully they’re won’t be so many people there.

1:30 p.m. – L did pretty well on the car ride as long as we played his music, ‘the happy song’ by Imogen Heap for the win. But we misjudged the seafood place and it’s absolutely rammed. There is an hour’s wait and L is already starting to fuss, I can’t cope with it. We all load back in the car and drive another 20 minutes (at least it’s back in our direction) to our second choice; a steakhouse.

2:00 p.m. – L falls asleep in the car and we manage to successfully transfer his car seat to the stroller so he can keep napping in the restaurant and praise to the parenting gods … he stays asleep. This means I get to eat the appetizer while it’s still hot, which as a new mom is a miracle.

4:00 p.m. – Time for some tummy time so we head down on to the floor to play a little. L is tolerating more and more tummy time now which is great and we’ve started doing some different reaching exercises with him to strengthen his core muscles. He’s got more abs than me at this point.

5:00 p.m. – We’ve hit this timing problem spot again, I’m trying to keep bedtime somewhat consistent for my own sanity as well as trying to trick L’s body to expect sleep at the same time every day, but we keep getting stuck with not enough time for a nap before bedtime but also no way for him to stay awake for bedtime because his wake window would be way too long. My plan today is to try and force a catnap, so off we go in his stroller for a walk with the dog. Ever since we moved into his big boy stroller, it seems to have magical properties. We walk for 30 mins and he drops off for the last 10 mins so my mission has been achieved, just enough sleep to get him through the last hour to bedtime, plus we all get some fresh air and vitamin d, win win.

6:00 p.m. – Normally I’d be cooking dinner but because of the late lunch out, we’re skipping dinner today. Instead, we spend some time reading to L, he’s not really into it yet but I think he enjoys the pictures, there’s a lot of having to wrestle the book out of his mouth though.

6:30 p.m. – Bedtime routine, we’re trying to keep this really consistent, 5 mins outside to calm down, then bath or wipe down, pjs, sleep sack, story – I’m reading the same one everyday which means I now know it by heart ‘I love you forever’ little book!

7:06 p.m. – put him down drowsy but awake and the screaming begins.

7:11 p.m. – First pop-in. S did the pop-in while I took a nice long shower. Obviously, I was still watching the baby monitor because apparently, I’m incapable of relaxing anymore. I muted it and watched YouTube at the same time. With our “no screens around the baby” rule, the shower has become one of the only places I get to watch my late-night clips. God, I miss tv.

7:16 p.m. – Oh, excellent he’s asleep, only 10 minutes of tears tonight. I didn’t get round to making dinner before bedtime tonight and I’m exhausted so when my husband S hopefully suggests we order a pizza, I shock us both by saying yes.

9:01 p.m. – Time for bed for us, we’re rewatching Ted Lasso at the moment and we watch an episode in bed, it’s just so uplifting and lovely to watch something set at home.

Day 2

1:41 a.m. – Awake. He looked right on the edge of sleep but kept popping his little head back up again.

1:46 a.m. – Went to do pop-in but decided to also feed him. He ate like a starving man, definitely the right call.

6:30 a.m. – He slept until 6:15 a.m. which is technically an acceptable time to start the day. I keep reminding myself of that. Parenthood is realizing that 8 a.m. is no longer early.

8:05 a.m. – Trying to do the first nap independently. I did the nap routine ‘diaper, sleep sack, story, feed’ and put him down drowsy but awake. God how I hate the words drowsy but awake now. ****Listening to him scream still feels awful. It’s insane to me that day sleep and night sleep somehow operate under completely different laws of physics.

8:12 a.m. – pop-in. My friend G sent me a lovely long voice note so I listened to that while sitting outside his room willing him to fall asleep. The sleep consultant says independent sleep should eventually help him connect sleep cycles during naps, so we’ll see.

8:20 a.m. – he fell asleep. I jump in the shower to wash spit-up out of my hair and whatever other body part he’d managed to hit. Motherhood really is glamorous.

9:14 a.m. – He’s still asleep. Fifty-four minutes. He connected a second sleep cycle. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I finally listed our sofa on Facebook Marketplace, a task that had been sitting on my to-do list for weeks.

9:55 a.m. – He’s awake and cheery. Final nap total: 1 hour 35 minutes. A miracle. So, I guess there must be something to this independent sleep business. Time for pancakes.

11:20 a.m. – Pool time. It’s finally warm enough and this is our second pool day with little man. Genuinely so much fun. We’ve got him a float that’s a bit like trying to put on a straight-jacket but man he looks so comfy and relaxed in it. Just floating in his own shade watching us play around.

12:05 p.m. – Nap attempt number two. I’d just heated up leftovers for lunch when L woke up thirty minutes into the nap. Of course.

I tried rescuing it by rocking him back to sleep, which worked… until I transferred him into the crib and his eyes flew open instantly. Nap over. S held him while I ate my lunch, though it’s noticeably less relaxing eating while a baby stares directly into your soul.

1:00 p.m. – Back on the floor again. Always on the floor. Babies are a young person’s game.

L’s tummy time is really improving though. He’s getting so strong. We opened his new Lovevery box and played with the sensory tissue box for ages. Elite baby entertainment.

3:00 p.m. – Feed and accidental boob nap. We’re trying to encourage more independent sleep now, so contact naps are getting rarer, but honestly holding him while he sleeps still feels like one of the greatest joys of my life.

Disaster nearly struck when S sent me a YouTube video and it opened at full volume beside us. L startled, turned his head dramatically… then somehow drifted back to sleep.

5:00 p.m. – Epic game of peekaboo, he’s started to grin so much whenever you just cover your face now. You don’t even have to get as far as saying peekaboo before he’s loving it.

7:02 p.m. – down. One pop-in only. He went into the crib smiling and then immediately started screaming like we’d betrayed him in the deepest possible way. But went to sleep after 10 mins.

7:30 p.m. – Late dinner tonight as I didn’t get round to cooking before bedtime. It is nice to get to eat in peace without L clamoring to get out of his high-chair. Plus, truly hot food is a rarity nowadays so I reveled in that too.

8:30 p.m. – More Ted Lasso and finally time for bed. I so hope it’s a good night.

2:30 a.m. – Feed. He managed to spit-up in my hair again. Too tired to do anything more than wipe it out and crawl back into bed. Check the monitor, damn he’s awake. Please go to sleep little baby. His open eyes are so creepy on the night camera. I close my eyes and hope for the best.

Day 3

5:55 a.m. – Hmm nearly at the 6 a.m. cutoff. I’m really trying not to take him out of the crib before 6 a.m. so I dawdle a bit heading to his room. Quick bathroom trip and then I start the coffee maker so it’ll be ready for me when I sit down to feed L after changing him.

6:05 a.m. – L has started screaming through his first diaper change of the day, I wish I knew why. But it’s hard to take at 6 a.m. Then time for a feed and we play on the floor for a while.

8:00 a.m. – Put down awake for nap. Only screamed for five minutes and didn’t even need a pop-in. Success. Slept for 1 hour 20 minutes. These are the moments that dictate my emotional state now. A good nap makes me feel euphoric. A bad one can completely derail my nervous system.

11:30 a.m. Trying to stretch his wake window. Very fussy baby.

12:00 p.m. – Independent nap attempt failed spectacularly. He screamed so hard I thought he might make himself sick, so I aborted mission and fed him to sleep instead. Sleep training feels like a constant emotional negotiation between consistency and “I physically cannot let him cry anymore.”

2:10 p.m. – S handed me the baby because his ‘shift’ was over. I realized I hadn’t completed a single work task I’d planned to finish today, so I made myself a depressing little note for 8 p.m. tonight.

3:00 p.m. – Lovely afternoon walk. Unfortunately, L fell asleep for approximately thirty seconds in the driveway. Does thirty seconds count as a micro nap?

4:00 p.m. – Apparently yes, yes, it does. I’ve now spent the last hour trying to get this child to sleep. Even the fail-safe carrier didn’t work.

5:00 p.m. – This nap is officially skipped, so I’m trying to keep it very calm and relaxed. We read a few books, I’m really enjoying revisiting my childhood books and getting to know S’s favorites through reading them to L. Then a nice long feed before starting bedtime routine, a little earlier than usual but I brought bed time up by 30 mins to account for the skipped nap.

6:30 p.m. – Down for bed. Screaming again.

He actually sleeps pretty well once he’s asleep now, but hearing him scream every single time I put him into the crib is really starting to wear me down emotionally.

Three minutes to fall asleep though — a new record.

Had to keep checking the monitor in the shower afterwards because I could swear I heard phantom crying. I genuinely wasn’t expecting motherhood to rewire my brain this aggressively.

7:30 p.m. – S and I collapsed on the sofa with some snacks and watched some more tv. It is nice to just be able to watch tv without thinking about screen time.

Day 4

1:30 a.m. – Wake-up and feed. Then immediately spiraled thinking about work. It makes it so much harder to go back to sleep.

6:15 a.m. – Up before the sun again today, it’s nice and calm though. We nurse in the comfy chair and I enjoy my coffee while he enjoys his milk. It’s hard being his only source of food but it’s also really nice.

8:15 a.m. – Down for first nap. One pop-in and asleep. I’m starting to get hopeful, which honestly feels dangerous.

8:50 a.m. – Never mind. Awake after thirty minutes.

11:45 a.m. – Second nap went down suspiciously easily, mostly because I’m pretty sure he wasn’t fully awake when I put him down. I just couldn’t emotionally handle another screaming session.

12:25 p.m. – Only lasted twenty-six minutes. Tried rescuing the nap with breastfeeding but his eyes pinged open the second he touched the crib mattress.

12:39 p.m. – I’m working while S handles baby duty and all I can hear through the wall is fussing.

I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and tried not to interfere. Modern motherhood feels like constantly trying to split yourself into two fully functioning humans. My parents are back in my home country, so most days my support comes through voice notes from friends and facetime calls with my mum.

1 p.m. – One-handed eating taco salad while breastfeeding during a work call. Not something I ever expected on my bingo card. America really expects women to return to work like this and somehow act normal. The whole system is broken.

I know I’m lucky to work from home and continue breastfeeding, but even with flexibility this still feels nearly impossible some days.

2:26 p.m. – Accidental nursing contact nap. Forty-one minutes. Love the contact naps, I know they won’t last forever, so I’m trying to enjoy every one.

3:15 p.m. – Sat outside in the garden under the trees. I thought L would be fascinated by leaves moving in the wind. Instead, he tried to eat the grass.

Quick check on Google: “Can babies eat grass?”

5:30 p.m. – Dinner time, we’ve started putting L at the table in his high chair with us and giving him a plate and spoon to play with so he can get used to the idea before we start solids next month.

6:30 p.m. – Bedtime routine, I’m starting to look forward to bed time routine more and more. It’s so nice and calm. But equally I’m dreading the screaming so it’s mixed emotions for sure.

7:15 p.m. – Down for bed, he’s smiling as I back away which is a big change. I close the door and he immediately starts sobbing but by the time I’ve got to S’s office he’s stopped. Check the monitor and he’s awake but playing with his hands and calm.

7:30 p.m. – I’m staring at the camera like it’s a bomb about to go off any minute. He’s still awake but also still not screaming. What is this witchcraft?

7:35 p.m. – He’s asleep! Well, this was painless. I feel like a different woman without having to listen to him scream himself to sleep. I jump in the pool for a swim and it’s so nice to just enjoy the water and not think about anything. It also makes me feel like one day soon I could work out again. That day is not today but maybe one day soon.

8:30 p.m. – S is playing video games tonight so I get into bed after my shower with my book and relax before falling asleep before 9:30, man parenthood is wild.

Day 5

3 a.m. – I wake up as if an alarm has gone off but L is still asleep, I roll over and try to fall back to sleep. I keep checking the monitor but he’s definitely asleep and thanks to the nanit band I can see he’s breathing too. So, nothing to be concerned about.

6:00 a.m. – Holy shit, he slept through the night! I can’t believe it. I get up to pump as I’m leaking through my shirt.

6:40 a.m. – Wake L up for the day. I never understood before becoming a parent that eventually you start waking a sleeping baby on purpose because otherwise your entire day descends into chaos. But if I don’t wake him now his first nap will need to start during my first meeting, a recipe for disaster.

7:30 a.m. – Lots of cuddles this morning and a long nursing session, he’s hungry after the long night. Time for some baby yoga as I don’t want to do tummy time given how much he just ate. Some spit up is guaranteed but tummy time too soon after eating always makes it worse.

8:45 a.m. – Down for first nap. Eleven minutes of screaming, while I have to start work. I cried in my first work meeting of the day while muted on Zoom, which honestly feels like a pretty accurate summary of this stage of life.

The upside: he slept for almost two hours afterwards. Two hours! Parenthood feels completely omnipresent. I no longer feel like an individual person — I feel like a unit. Just me-and-baby. It’s strange because S still seems able to exist as his own person alongside being a parent, and that’s hard to not resent.

10:30 a.m. – Joined an important meeting that had already been rescheduled once. The organizer immediately asked to reschedule it again. Honestly, same. I don’t want to attend this meeting either, but at this point let’s all just suffer through it together instead of dragging this out for another two weeks.

12:22 p.m. – In between meetings I ran out to get L because he was screaming at S. He’s so quick to scream at the moment. Mild inconvenience? Scream. Mild displeasure? Scream. Slight delay in milk delivery? Immediate outrage.

The constant crying is really starting to wear me down.

Breastfeeding a baby underneath a nursing cover while simultaneously trying to look professional on a video call is one of those things nobody prepares you for. And honestly? It sucks.

1:40 p.m. – Tried putting him down awake for his second nap. He screamed so hard I thought he might spontaneously combust. I gave up after five minutes because my heart clearly wasn’t in it today. Consistency is incredibly difficult when you yourself are emotionally exhausted.

2:11 p.m. – Terrible nap, naturally. I made zero progress at work and now I’m back on baby duty. Oh well. I’m trying to accept that in this season of life, productivity is going to look different. Some days success is finishing work tasks. Some days success is everyone surviving on moderate sleep.

4:00 p.m. – Another great game of peekaboo, trying to make L laugh is my new favorite activity. He loves being held up in the air while we say ‘flying baby’. It’s so fun and also doubles as the only workout I get at the moment.

7 p.m. – Down for bed but struggling to settle. He was clearly tired when I put him down, but apparently not quite tired enough.

Baby sleep feels like trying to crack an impossible code where the answer changes daily.

7:05 p.m. – First pop-in. S always handles the first pop-in while I hide in another room trying not to listen to the crying. Partly because hearing it physically hurts me, and partly because the sleep training recommends having the non-breastfeeding parent do check-ins when possible.

Honestly, I’ll take any excuse.

7:14 p.m. – Just before I got up for the next pop-in, he suddenly conked out. The relief I feel every time he falls asleep is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived through months of baby sleep struggles.

I didn’t realize before becoming a parent how much another person’s sleep could completely dictate your own emotional wellbeing.

7:30 p.m. – Finally, some time for us. We’re huge Project Hail Mary fans — I’ve listened to the audiobook multiple times — and the adaptation just hit streaming, so we curled up on the sofa to watch it together. I appreciate uninterrupted time together in a way I never really did before L.

8:50 p.m. – Rocky is somehow even cuter onscreen than I imagined. But my 6 a.m. wake-up finally caught up with me, so we paused halfway through and went to bed instead.

One of the strangest parts of parenthood is how tiny your world becomes while simultaneously feeling emotionally bigger than ever.

Day 6

4 a.m. – quick wakeup, fed him back to sleep and he went down quick and easy. Night wakeups like this aren’t so bad. I even manage to fall back to sleep quite quickly.

7 a.m. – Lie-in this morning, which in parent terms now means getting up at 7 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. It was glorious!

10 a.m. – Mum group this morning. Stressful drive there because L screamed basically the entire journey. Every red light felt personally offensive. Then we arrived and somehow all the other babies were screaming too, which weirdly made me feel so much better.

12:30 p.m. – He fell asleep after exactly one song in the car.

We stopped for a snack on the way home after I realized I was starving in that deep breastfeeding way where you feel like your body is consuming itself from the inside out. Luckily L slept through the whole interaction, thank God for drive through coffee shops. Moved the car seat straps earlier and now he leans slightly forward when he sleeps, which naturally sent me spiraling into anxiety.

2 p.m. – Home and I’d kill for a nap, traffic was bumper to bumper. But L slept the whole way home so of course now he’s full of beans. This is a cruel part of being a parent, they never want to sleep and we always want to sleep.

4 p.m. – Finally, time for a nap, I feed L to sleep in our bed because I fully intend to take this nap with him. And nap I do, it’s glorious. I even wake up slightly before L so I get to revel in the contact nap for a minute rather than being awoken by screaming, a real treat.

5 p.m. – It’s finally stopped raining so time for a swim. L looks so cute in his swimsuit and sun hat. I never wanted to get out the pool when I was a kid, and I can’t wait until L wants to play in the pool all day.

6 p.m. – Dinner time, L decides pretty quickly that he’d much rather be held than in his highchair and keeps yelling in frustration at me. I end up taking him out and eating with one hand because that’s more pleasant than trying to eat with L yelling at us.

6:30 p.m. – Time for bedtime routine, we’ve made bath time a little longer and got some bath toys and L is loving them. They mainly end up in his mouth but he really enjoys it.

7 p.m. – Tonight was the first time I moved nursing earlier in the bedtime routine to stop him falling asleep on the breast at all. It worked well and I was feeling hopeful. I put him down but I wasn’t sure how drowsy he was as.

7:30 p.m. – Clearly not drowsy enough as he’s been screaming for 30 minutes now. Man, I hate this.

7:40 p.m. – he’s hyperventilating, I jump in. I can’t let him cry like this. I pick him up and comfort him. He collapsed on to my shoulder and immediately calmed down. Oh, my poor darling boy, it feels so wrong to let him cry. My entire job for the first 5.5 months of his life was to stop him crying, and now I’m expected to just let him cry in the name of sleep training.

8 p.m. – He’s asleep. I had planned to swim after bedtime but now I feel so bad after all the crying, it’s all I can manage to put Netflix on. I need to get back to some sort of working out but when exactly am I supposed to do that?

Day 7

1 a.m. – Oof earlier wake-up today, doesn’t bode well. I fed him and he went straight back to sleep, as did I.

4 a.m. – Yep, another wake-up, same deal – quick feed and then back to sleep. I, on the other hand, did not get back to sleep quickly. I was drifting in and out for a long while and then fell into a very hectic dream.

6 a.m. – He woke up on the dot and hooted for me. I love when he hoots instead of screams, it’s such a more pleasant start to the day. Greeted by a smiling baby, what a treat.

7 a.m. – We called Grandma and we were able to have a bit of a chat before L got too fussy. The last 30 mins of any wake window at the moment is hit and miss. More often than not he’s a grumpy little man ready for a nap but if I don’t stretch them then he ends up only sleeping for 30 mins or less.

8 a.m. – Down for the nap. I love when he goes down for a nap in good time in the morning. I don’t have to start work until 9, so I get to have some time to myself without feeling like I should be doing something else. I’ve struggled with this ever since I was student, the ever-present feeling that you should be doing something else. Becoming a mum has only heightened it but also made it more true as there always is something else, I need to be doing.

10 a.m. – A lovely long nap, S actually had to wake him up, as we’re capping daytime naps at two hours. I wish I had any idea what triggered the long naps, but if I did, I’d do it for every nap and that would take the frustrating guesswork out of it, so I guess that’s why there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

12 p.m. – Quick lunch break while feeding L, I’ve gotten pretty good at eating one-handed over a feeding baby but I have also dropped food on him multiple times so it’s not a perfect system.

2 p.m. – Finished work for the day, so nice to be able to stop at 2 p.m. – it really makes the work day more palatable. And gives us time to do other things with our day so we drive over to our favorite Indian restaurant for a late lunch. Lunch is the easiest meal to eat out with the little man and he slept on the drive over so he’s sunny and happy in the restaurant. Flirting with everyone who sees him, so cute.

3:50 p.m. – Perfect nap timing getting into the car. Except he absolutely refused to sleep. Played peekaboo in the back seat, it managed to keep him entertained for thirty minutes while traffic crawled along, which was pretty good going.

5:02 p.m. – Still trapped in this car. He’s lost his mind twice which, honestly, fair enough. Moments away from losing my own mind now.

5:15 p.m. – Still stuck in traffic. Still yelling. We pulled over so I could feed him, hoping milk would magically solve the problem.

It did not.

6 p.m. – Officially skipped-nap territory. I hate a skipped nap because I know exactly what’s coming: overtired chaos.

Then, literally as we turned onto our road, he closed his eyes and fell asleep in approximately thirty seconds. Honestly it felt targeted.

6:58 p.m. – Down for bed. Fell asleep in two minutes flat. The emotional whiplash of baby sleep is genuinely insane. Twenty-four hours ago, I thought I might never recover from the screaming. Tonight I’m staring lovingly at the monitor thinking he’s the cutest human who has ever existed.

7:30 p.m. – It’s a much nicer start to the evening when it doesn’t include screaming. I prep some snacks and we finally settle down to watch the second half of Project Hail Mary. It was lovely, they did a great job. They took a lot of science out though, which was really enjoyable in the book, so that was a shame.

9:00 p.m. – In bed in good time and so happy about it. Here’s hoping no early wake-ups for L and I. I fall asleep in 2 minutes flat myself.