Being a new mother means my life is plagued with an unsuspecting force of mayhem: the Involuntary Nap.

Picture this: You’ve been running errands all day, you’re tired, and the baby has finally fall asleep (yay!). You sit down to read a book, delighted to receive the unexpected gift of a few minutes of free time. The baby begins to fuss, so you groan and pick her up, trying to get her back to sleep. Two hours later, you wake up late for work. Duh DUNNNNN.

It’s a real threat, people. Could happen to anyone. With a baby.

This has been my first week of working only one job, and a few things have changed. I don’t have to wake up early, I’ve been staying up really late (I work until 12:30 AM two or three nights a week, which makes it harder to get to bed much earlier on nights I don’t work), I’ve had time to play with Mattie and start thinking about things like her eating schedule and how to get her to nap, and I’ve run about 30 errands that had been piling up for weeks. I’ve also felt just a little bit clearer than I used to: I’ve mostly lost the feeling that I was walking around with, the sense that I wouldn’t remember any of this when I woke up.

So I was surprised to notice that I’m still falling asleep pretty much whenever. I am stalked by the Involuntary Nap. Mostly it’s because more sleep isn’t the same as enough sleep, but I’ve also come to a conclusion: having a baby means that even when you’re not busy, you’re busy. If I had this work schedule two years ago, I’d be getting 9 hours of sleep a night and watching about six hours of TV. My house would probably be almost as messy as it is now (okay, maybe not quite) but I’d have more books read, more movies watched, and I’d just generally be…brighter. More relaxed, and without the sense that every moment of free time is grotesquely limited. I’m not unhappy now, and I’m certainly grateful to have more time not at work, but I’m always busy.

This has also manifested itself in my new inability to be punctual. I used to be a person who was always on time. I thought punctuality was tied to responsibility and respect, and I paid attention to it. In other words, I thought of being on time as something I had the option of doing, and I did it. Now I feel like being on time is something elusive that I’m always chasing. I always intend to be on time, but at the last moment Mattie decides she’s hungry or I realize I need to pack more bottles, and everything gets delayed. Or i get distracted and actually (gasp) lose track of my schedule, a quality I used to despise in other people. Last night one of the last thoughts I had before I fell asleep was to remember my chiropractor appointment this afternoon. This morning after I woke up I thought of it several times, reminding myself to pack up the diaper bag so I’d be ready. At 1:45, I was half a mile from the house, walking Mattie around in the nice weather, and I realized the appointment had started 30 minutes earlier. Fabulous.

I now wish I could go back and un-judge all the people I’ve known who couldn’t arrive on time for anything. Well, maybe not all of them, but certainly the ones with kids. I’ve never been a fan of the expression “it’s always something” - I think it has gotten tossed around to the point of meaninglessness in our culture - but I’m starting to realize that it really is always something. Or it was always something, 20 minutes ago but you forgot about it. Plus, at any moment, it’s entirely possible that y- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..