When you become a parent, suddenly sleep gains sooooo much more importance, and even complete strangers will ask you how much you’re getting. Ironic really, when you consider you’re probably getting less than you ever have before (& if you have a 9 week old baby and are still getting lots of sleep, I don’t want to know!). The process actually starts before you even have your baby – sleeping is practically impossible when you’re heavily pregnant. Especially if, like me, you have SPD…it wasn’t fun.
My sleep history has never been good. I’ve been an intermittent insomniac ever since I can remember, trying every natural remedy under the sun (lettuce leaves eaten before bed was the oddest…apparently lettuce contains opiates! Didn’t work though, and as much as I like lettuce, going to sleep with that taste in your mouth is not easy!). I’m sort of used to it now and can function on surprisingly little sleep.
What I’ve learnt though is that being woken up by small people is a different kind of tiredness to being kept awake by insomnia. It drains so much more out of you. The sleepy breastfeeding hormones help, but then Twink decides to wake up at dawn after a night full of feeding Squishy, (and after a late bedtime for me as I’m incapable of going to sleep before 11!) and I’m feeling a little dead. I don’t even get up to Twink (husband does, bless him), but it still disrupts what little sleep I was getting (Squishy likes lie ins so has usually settled in for a nice long sleep just before Twink wakes up). Today I’ve been awake since 5am after going to bed about midnight. Yawn.
So when random strangers ask how she’s sleeping after both getting her name wrong and asking if she’s good (she’s my BABY – she’s blimming fantastic okay?!) I have a tendency to get a little sarcastic.
The answer, in case you’re interested, is that she sleeps fine, like a baby in fact (better than Twink did at this age), but generally I’m lying awake next to her making mental lists, surfing the Internet or…you know…enjoying cosy cuddles with a sleeping newborn.
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This is my first post written entirely on the WordPress app on my iPhone, which means I can’t do as much to it as I usually would, & for some reason the photos are stuck at the end. I will edit that when I can get to my laptop, but in the meantime, one photo is a sleeping Twink resting his head on my bump, & the other is Squishy asleep on my shoulder…lovely sleeping babies 