Eyes Wide Shut

摘要

Last week my friend laura showed up at my front door, pushing her three-month-old son in his stroller. "I'm really ... whatchamacallit," she said. "Tired?" I asked her. "The baby's not... you know." "Sleeping?" I asked. Laura's eyes had that familiar pinwheeling quality I remembered from my own first months of motherhood—that hallucinatory period when a mother's heart is opened wide, even as her eyelids flutter shut. No matter what the poets say about the ethereal joys of parenthood, any exhausted parent knows it is hard to concentrate on anything—sex, eating, finally changing out of your sweatpants—if you've become a sleep junkie, jonesing for some REMS. The key for parents' getting some sleep is first getting the baby to sleep—an eternal problem that has spawned all manner of programs, products and mother-in-law's parenting tips.