Enter Britta. Before she was born I was hoping that I would not have to set an alarm to wake her up at night to feed...I was hoping she would do what babies do and just wake up when she needed to eat. I take it back!!!! At least with Milton I knew I was going to get a solid 4 hours of sleep, get up for about 45 minutes, and then back to bed for another 4 hours. Britta is totally unpredictable...what I can predict is that at about 9:00 p.m. she wakes up and wants to stay up. She also wants to eat about every hour for two or three hours. And she likes to pretend that she is sleeping in your arms after those few hours, so you set her down, turn off the light and climb into bed oh so quietly, and right when you think 'ok I am going to get some sleep'...BAM the crying starts...and not just little fussy cries, full on screaming 'how could you lay me in this cold pack n play???' and you pick her up and she just wants to be held...eyes wide open, but at least she is quiet.
So this has been my life for the last three weeks. Running on 4 hours of broken sleep. I still have to get up at 5:30 or 6:00 to make sure Mike gets up and off to work on time. People tell me to sleep when the baby sleeps. I say it's not that simple. During the day I have 3 hours give or take between feedings, between the time she will wake herself up to eat. I have never been a napper, I find it extremely difficult to nap during the day. Sleeping is reserved for night time. And it doesn't matter how little sleep I got, I just cannot nap. Being home on maternity leave also makes me feel like I should be able to get all of the routine cleaning and laundry done, as well as extra projects I wouldn't have time for. I blame that on the perception that American moms can care for their kids, tend to the housework, nurture a marriage and work full time all on their own. I never realized how true that is until having kids. Just as a woman you feel you should be able to do it all, add becoming a mom and that feeling increases threefold. And there is no time for yourself, and you don't even consider taking time for yourself, you feel guilty. I feel guilty when I cannot get the normal cleaning done. I need to work on that. I did actually plan to take some time for myself on this leave and I have appointments for a haircut and a pedicure. But I know I will feel guilty and anxious to get back to the homestead while I am at those appointments. I just can't help it.
Back to the issue of no sleep, which was the point of this post. It's freaking hard. I am very worried about how I will function once I get back to work in a few weeks. A couple nights this past week she has slept for a stretch of 5 hours at night but it's been from 10 to 3, so I am still getting up in the middle of the night to feed and not feeling rested when I have to get up for the day. I told Mike last night that the sleep deprivation is so hard that had Milton been like this, I don't know if I would have had another baby. Mike sometimes helps overnight but he has his own issues with sleep and needs to use a c-pap machine so that makes things difficult for getting his help. I would almost rather he got his sleep so he was not crabby during the day when I can use his help more. I can be sleep deprived and not bitch about it, him, not so much and it's something I don't care to hear about from him when I have had two hours of sleep and he got up to change a diaper once at 1.
In the middle of the night when she is up, I just tell myself that it will not be like this forever and am thankful she is not screaming and that we are getting extra cuddle time. Which is very hard to do in that blur of being half awake. During the day I just drink my coffee and carry on and keep busy...
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