Glad to be back at work ... need the sleep

Originally posted on onlinechester.com Oct 10, 2006 - 22:24:29 EDT

It was hard coming back to work, not Monday, but Sunday night, to attend the Democratic Party candidate “stump” at Chester State Park.
A big reason it was difficult was indeed leaving behind my new baby boy with his mother for the first time in two weeks. I missed them both severely.
But, truth be told, it was also difficult having to go back to wearing long pants for the first time in two weeks.
My knees were shell-shocked and have been treating me like I'm the Taliban.
That said, I'll probably be a better person for coming back to work - I need the sleep.
Does becoming a father humble all men?
I am impressed with myself in one aspect. I was in the delivery room for the entire experience, and did not pass out despite great provocation, first from the doctor whose cell phone went off to “The Tiger Rag.” I saw what she went through and know what a trouper my wife is - I know how hard she worked. But it isn't for the squeamish. I thought I was in that number, but I'm apparently not.
She got drugs to help her through most of the labor - the serious part was about an hour and 20 minutes. But it went from about 11 p.m. Thursday to after 6:32 p.m. Friday. That's about 19 and half hours total.
She slept through much of it. We worked out the early contractions, did the breathing, the rubbing, the walking the halls to move the labor along.
But it reached a point where she was too uncomfortable, and they gave her the good junk. I tried, I tried, through the first 18 and half to get some sleep. But I couldn't.
She's been up with our son most of the nights since his birth. I thought that was the one thing I brought to the table - the ability to wake up with little provocation from the slightest noise.
But I'm not my normally wakeable self.
I had gotten up early that Thursday. At 7 a.m., I think. I got two and half hours sleep from 7 a.m. Thursday to the time my son was born after 6 p.m. Friday.
My family is near enough by that we had some of them in the recovery room after the birth for an hour or so. I might have gotten to bed at 10 p.m., I think.
So I went about 36 hours without sleep, and it leaves a hole that you just can't fill. I worked 36 hours straight back in 1997, covering a drug roundup then a prison break the same night. But I was younger then, and I got to drive to the beach for a vacation the very next day.
You can bounce back.
My appearance to the contrary, I'm not quite so resilient or rubbery.
You can't get back lost sleep, and as much as I was warned to do it, you can't store up sleep in advance, either.
I was also humbled that the paper got out on time, and we didn't miss any major stories. Oh, there's a big announcement in the paper this week that you might have read about in other dailies last week. But the truth is, we covered parts of that story last month, letting Chester County readers know there were jobs on the way.
We heard about one other story that we couldn't develop and get into the print edition, so it was a few days after on that one.
But our city reporter and Sports Editor Travis Jenkins had two or three stories on Chester's new administrator before our daily competition wrote their first story about that issue. If they beat us on one, we romped on them on the other.
They could have beat us on the second development on that story, but for some reason didn't.
We got one story up on the web before any other publication in the area. I helped a little on that one from home. We had a great assist from our company's editor at-large, Josh Coffman.
So you might not have noticed I was out.
Again, it was humbling.
But I'm glad to be back. Like I said, I need the sleep.