Hello. While I was on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, not Derek Jr., but soon to be Derek Jr. You can read all the entries here.
May 6
Exhaustion has finally arrived.
This may sound strange, but I didn’t worry too much about fatigue. I have suffered from insomnia since I was 18, and it has darkened every part of my adult life. My first job out of college was as a sales assistant at a law firm. One time, after a sleepless night, my friend came to the office (the cabin I shared with the security guard) to assign some work. After looking at my sad face, a knowing laugh spread from them. He was obviously much happier than I was at 23 years old, and he thought I was out all night partying. “I miss those days,” he said wistfully. The thought of bullying that would leave me depressed brought him so much joy that I no longer had the heart to tell him the truth. Not only did I go out and paint the town red last night, I went to bed before the sun went down, hoping that if I could sleep for 12 hours, maybe I could get eight hours in total sleep in bits and pieces. Needless to say, it didn’t work.
All of this means that the fatigue is grinding, but I feel like I’m about as used to it as you can get. At the beginning of this year, after suffering through the night, my wife would sometimes say, “We need to check it before the baby comes.” I didn’t agree. I realized that I would be too tired to care. I was walking so far into that undiscovered world that even fatigue couldn’t keep up, and I would just pass out whenever the opportunity presented itself. That’s pretty much what happened – in the first month anyway.
Then several things happened simultaneously. Last week, Derek Jr. had a particularly challenging night. Second, we realized that the initial change needed to be extended over a long period of time. Between the physical recovery and the demands of breastfeeding and pumping (the latter forcing her to be awake during my shift anyway), my wife was carrying too much of a burden. However, that means the extended early shift is now often over in the morning. My only chance to sleep off-duty, undisturbed comes during the mid-day hours. The third was the real killer: Insomnia finally caught up with me.
Now, I put Derek Jr. for him to go to bed around 10 or 11, I finish some chores, sleep for an hour or so, get up when he wakes up, change him, feed him, change him again, comfort him, tuck him in, put him to bed, do the last job, then go to sleep myself. But I can’t sleep again. I just lie awake for a few hours until he wakes up again, then repeat the routine, this time 50% more zombified. It is brutal. My stomach is in knots all day. Low level head worms always on the left side of my brain. I’m growing up. Sometime in the middle of the night, as he was screaming his head off in anger at having his diaper lovingly changed, I have a vague memory of giving Derek Jr. my devotion. I mean that literally. I told him he would win. “I surrender,” I said out loud to my one-month-old baby in diapers. With yet another ear-splitting scream, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to take a quarter.
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I watched some baseball in there. I saw Ramón Laureano absolutely blast a home run to center field against the Giants on May 4. The Padres were down 3-1 in the ninth inning, and the homer made it a one-run game, but the rest of the Padres went down in peace. I regret not paying enough attention to really appreciate the start of the ABS challenge system. I have been writing about the strike zone for years. I feel like it’s been my beat at least, and now I have to watch as other people break down cool new information that I’m often added too much to fully understand. I pay attention enough to wonder what you are doing without me. How is every baseball player injured, except Mike Trout? How come only three teams in the AL have a winning record? Is there a new Nick Castellanos I don’t know, or are the Nick Castellanos I know still getting playing time?
As I write this, Derek Jr. he’s asleep, which means he’s been asleep for an hour and a half now, but every few minutes he engages in a few moments of light moaning, just enough to make me worry that I’m going to have to comfort him, and then he settles down. I’m watching the Dodgers cruise the Astros, 12-2. Andy Pages hit three home runs, but I only caught the last one, when he delivered a spectacular blast on a 53-mph eephus from poor César Salazar.
I can’t close with any similes or metaphors or themes at this time. Nothing more comes to my mind and Derek Jr. he will wake up any minute now. When he arrives, I will tell him that everything is fine. I will take her off and hug her and tell her how much I love her and how sweet she is. I will change his diaper. I will bounce him on my shoulder and sing to him and feel overwhelmed by love. I will miss the even smaller creature he was, and I will try hard to mark every detail of this moment because I feel it is all fading away so quickly.
One thing I hope I will remember forever: Sometime in the morning, Derek Jr. you made a mess. Luckily, my wife had just finished pumping and was there to help because it was a big two person job. As he cleaned the changing table, I grabbed Derek Jr. very bare on my chest and I pointed to her lovely little butt. We have never seen it because it lives in a diaper, but of course, I saw it there at night, funny. Even if it’s right in front of you, it’s really hard to wrap your head around the reality of such a small tush. It’s surprising.
Usually, if you see a baby in the wild, he is wearing a diaper, which covers his waist and looks big. It’s a lie, a fraud perpetrated on society by Big Baby, and because it matches their big jelly bellies and their big round heads, it’s an unbelievable lie. But the pure absurd truth was revealed to us this night and we couldn’t handle it.
That’s all the memory is, the two of us in the dim light by the changing table, exhausted beyond imagination, giggling uncontrollably at the world’s little race and crying out for its pitiful vengeance. Maybe you should have been there.
Wait, I have a metaphor after all. It’s now the fourth inning of the Angels-White Sox game, and someone on the Angels has just stepped onto second base. It’s a very bright day, and Chase Meidroth didn’t just lose the ball in the sun. The sun completely destroyed him. Indeed, he lay down on the ground, overwhelmed by heart and unable to even try to defend himself. He was so shocked that he hoped that he would still be alive after the ball landed wherever it was going to land. A person is sensitive. OK, Derek Jr. you are really awake at this time. Goodbye.
