Remember when you got your first real job out of college, and you lamented the lack of free time you had, relative to those undergrad years? It was a pretty fundamental leap from limited responsibility/limited rules to working what was sometimes an eleven-hour day, five days a week.

One year, you're cramming for the odd midterm, or pulling the occasional all-nighter on a twenty-page paper, but mostly hanging out with your friends, smoking pot on the front porch with the neighbors, and dreaming up ways to make the world a better place when you weren't dreaming up ways to get into your neighbor's pants.

The next year... you work. Most of the time.

Having a child is, I think, the same order of magnitude loss of free time. Another fundamental leap. I knew intellectually it was coming, but I don't think I was emotionally prepared for it.

Sometimes, I'm at the point where my job is the break. Work is the refreshing time-out from the enormous weight of taking responsibility for Asher's health and happiness. I don't know how Sarah does this all day, every day.