Remember how nice it felt to finally be home from the hospital? Remember how good it felt to crawl into your own bed? Remember how you only slept about two hours altogether?

It's true that babies sleep a lot, but they also wake up a lot. And they wake up at very odd hours of the night. A sensible person would go to be at around 10 or 11 in the evening and wake up well-rested at 6 or 7 in the morning. But not babies. Babies are completely irrational. Babies will sleep for a solid two hours in a row, but when they wake up EVERYONE has to wake up. When a baby wakes up, she needs food NOW. Also, she probably has a diaper full of black tar, so you'll need to change that, too. Then you have to rock the baby and go "SH-SH-SH-SHHHHHHH" to get her to go back to sleep. When she does finally go back to sleep, you have to lay her down gently and then very carefully crawl back into bed without disturbing your spouse. It'll take about an hour to an hour-and-a-half for your mind to settle down so you can get back to sleep, but by the time you do your baby is awake again with a need to eat and have her black-tar-diaper changed.

SIDENOTE: I've been told that the "SH-SH-SH-SHHHH" technique helps babies fall asleep because it simulates how it sounds inside the womb. I totally believe this and I think there's a direct correlation with my need to have a fan running all night. I need to feel like I'm back in the womb. I'm sure there's some Freudian theory behind this practice, but I don't have the time or desire to look it up.