Teething. I'd prefer locusts.

My baby boy is seven months old today. In the past three weeks, he has been cutting teeth. One sharp little nugget has already broken through his bottom gums, and one next to it looks to be close to the surface. He is restless and thrashy at night, mewling for milk almost every hour, and for the first time since his birth, I am sleep-deprived.

I love to sleep. It strikes me as a little odd that I am afraid of death, and yet have no issues with completely shutting my body down for half or more of every day. When I was a girl it was known among my friends that I could konk out in ten seconds, because during sleepovers they would count it down once the lights went out. Fast forward to my first weeks as a student at Bates College, and I remember being the only one of the four of us in my dorm room who went to bed at 11:00 p.m. I'd lie in bed watching a tiny television and say to myself, "I'm not going to lose who I am, and I like to go to bed early." So there. While I quickly gave up that pattern in favor of all-night card games and of course, My Studies, my overall commitment to sleep remained constant as I began the fine art of napping. I've never taken so many naps as I did on those Friday afternoons before meeting friends for dinner at Commons.

When I was pregnant last year, being exhausted was one of the new-mothery things I was most worried about, because I know I get testy when I don't have the full complement of shuteye hours that I need. I also can feel nauseous, panicky, and downright hopeless. Not the best shape to be in when caring for a newborn, I felt sure. More than one woman during that time told me to ignore all impulses to get things done when the baby is napping, and instead "sleep when baby sleeps."

Lo and behold, when Noah came home with us, he slept well. No, he was a Great Sleeper. We would all go to bed at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. in our big bed, and sleep until 6:00 or 7:00 the next morning. He would wake partially to nurse several times in the night, but there was no midnight rocking or pacing the rug with him at 4:00 a.m. He was a sleeper in the great tradition of his mother! On his six-month birthday, I felt sure that his sleeping patterns would only deepen, and we had it made.

Now...Well, I call him my Wild Bandicoot at night. I wake every morning not sure if I have caught the flu, or whether exhaustion has just caused a total failure of my sinuses. From the time we lay him in bed in the evening, Noah kicks his legs until they are on top of the blankets, pulls at his socks until he gets them off so he can stuff them in his mouth, then he arches his back and inches his way up the bed until his head is pressed against the wall and I'm sure he's going to compress his spine. I get up on one elbow, lift him up which is no small feat because he is now 25 pounds, move him down, feed him, and cover him. Over the next hour the same things happen again. Blankets off, kick, squirm, and up, up, up he goes. The same thing the next hour, and the next, and the next. It's alright in the light of day to write about it, it's really pretty funny, but at night when all my reason is gone and I get that queasy "I'm supposed to be sleeping" feeling, it's discouraging.

It's more than that. It's enraging. Interestingly, all of the motherly reading materials that have come my way recently have been hilarious accounts of the rage usually unspoken by mothers. It's been freeing to read, in the way watching every episode of "Sex and the City" on DVD was freeing. For those of you who haven't seen this now-over HBO television series, it involved four women who loved hard and lived to talk about it. Or was it lived hard and loved to talk about it? In any event, for this girl who has never had a girlfriend with whom I shared those kinds of secrets or experiences with, it was a watershed. In a similar way, reading about mothers who harbor dark desires to throw their children in the woods when they do that thing they always do, is a refreshing invitation to get real.

I don't do anger well. I like the way I think about anger - as an emotion that usually hides some deeper vulnerability. Isn't that nice? Sweet, really. But I am not nearly as sweet as that sounds. For example, I haven't said lately during these long nights, "It's late. I'm so tired. I don't have the patience to be the mother I wish I could be right now. I need someone to take care of me like I'm taking care of this baby. Gosh this is so hard for me." It doesn't happen like that, a touching sharing of deeper vulnerability. Instead, I really try to say nothing but of course something comes out and it's usually a hissed, "This is ridiculous. This is crazy." And then I throw the covers back in a melodramatic gesture of how put out I feel, and I move Noah down, feed him, cover him, and off we go again. It's not good. It's anger.

The A-word. I have never had good practice saying "I am angry." After 37 years, while I can surely recognize it, I have not yet turned toward it and befriended it. And what better time than the present, to take this part of me by the hand, or by the throat, and drag it close to my face so I can get a good look at it? A few nights ago Matthew and I were in bed, and Noah was lying between us playing with one of his bedtime toys. Matthew and I were talking about something, and I don't even remember what it was now, but I started to get angry and get that tone in my voice, and Matthew said he didn't want to talk about it any more because he was sure that Noah could tell I was angry. That silenced me, and I knew then and there it was time for some real change to take place. The tone went away, and in a calm voice I said that I didn't want Noah growing up thinking that it isn't okay to get angry and to show anger. As long as it is respectful. No hissing allowed. Even as I said the words, it was as though they had an echo, or they were getting cut into a stone tablet or something. This was my lesson to learn, this was my own painful new tooth.