It has been 15 weeks and two days since I laboured to get my son into the world. I am a sleep deprived wreck, a feeling most new mums will be all too familiar with. The problem is that I am not used to being this useless.
In my recent past, I was a successful education professional, used to juggling domestic life (just about) with marking, planning and senior leadership projects. 12 hour days, working in my own time to get the job done - those things were hard but perfectly doable. When there was a problem, there were so many different ways of finding a solution and most of the time, it worked. If I had a marking backlog, I would work extra hard in lunchtime or evenings until it had eased. If there was a problem with getting a new initiative up and running at work, I would work with my colleagues to support them in its implementation. If a child in my class was withdrawing or having some behavioural problems, I would work patiently with them and their parents to build their confidence and help them through any difficulties. Sometimes I got too tired and felt a bit hopeless, wishing that term would end so I could recharge before starting all over again.
That life seemed hard, but this life is harder.
I realise this is all sounding rather negative so I better redress the balance with some positives.
My baby boy is a sociable, fun-loving baby who loves to play. As a newborn, he was relatively easy. Up until 8 weeks, he would feed himself into a milk coma and sleep plenty. He enjoyed being on his playmat or in the bouncer chair. It was easy for me to grab twenty minutes here and there to get simple household tasks done. During the first month I had a horrible time with breastfeeding (that is an entirely different blogpost in its own right) but was determined to succeed. With a lot of bloody-mindedness and support from my husband, family and myriad health professionals, we cracked it and after a month, it was still a challenge but working. My baby boy smiled early and only cried when he was hungry.
At 8 weeks everything changed. The day he had his first injections, I felt like I had betrayed him terribly. I had let two nurses stab him simultaneously in either thigh with their vaccine filled syringes. He had yelped and cried uncontrollably. I fed him with my now practised breastfeeding skills and soothed him to sleep. He was ok until that evening, he cried for two hours straight and didn't stop until I gave him some Calpol. The next morning, he was like a different baby He didn't want to be cuddled and wanted to be by himself. He was irritable and cranky. During that week, he wouldn't be held by strangers and barely tolerated being held by me unless he was really tired. Sleeping became more of a problem. He was overtired most of the time and refused to nap for more than 20-40 minutes at a time.
After a week or so, his better humour returned. He enjoyed adult attention again and seemed to be getting back on track. But the sleeping problem has remained.
His sleeping problem is now my sleeping problem. I have not had more than six hours broken sleep across a night since he was born. For five out of the last six nights, I have had between one and three hours broken sleep. I am broken.
But the real problem is this. Solving a baby's issues is not the same as solving work problems. My son is well fed and - due to the fact, I get up and feed or cuddle him back to sleep when he stirs in the night - quite well rested. But I am not. I have survived on sugary snacks to keep my energy levels up because they are easy to grab and bring a temporary surge of energy. I am not well rested. I get up three-four times every night and only sleep in 1-2 hour stints. I can't sleep in the day because my baby won't nap for long enough unless he is in the car or the sling. The solutions for my son are to the detriment of my own health.
You may ask where my husband is in all of this. He is brilliant. He gets home every night from work and has cooked, washed up. Or he has bathed our son and taken him while I can get some jobs done. I refuse to involve him in the middle of the night unless it is really traumatic (for example a recent poo explosion all over a grobag). After all, he has to function at work all day and I believe that he needs his sleep to do this. He tells me off for not waking him. He tells me it isn't fair and that I need to rely on him more.
I do. He is right.
But I am used to being an independent problem solver and it is a completely foreign idea that I should be forced to rely on someone else to get something as simple as sleep.
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