Sleep

Sleep is a thing that most new (and existing?) parents fret over. We are constantly told before the baby arrives to make sure we enjoy our sleep because it will never be the same again. And it's true but also ridiculous. It's not as if I can bank my sleep before having a baby, cashing in six months later when I'm walking around all zombie like.

I remember in the first two weeks (the 'fog') I would become extremely anxious about the evenings. It was winter here still so it would get dark around four or five, and I would start to panic thinking 'what if I'm up all night, how am I going to function the next day?' It was actually really awful, the feeling still so vivid - I can feel it in my stomach. Dave would send me to bed after I had fed Ada and he would stay up with her but I felt as though I was meant to be up with my new family too. Same went for naps during the day. Dave would look after Ada but I thought I should be around them. Eventually I learnt to nap during the day and to not worry so much about the impending nights. I wasn't up all night and even if I did get less sleep then I had hoped too I always figured I could nap during the day and catch up on what I missed the previous night. 

The next fews months things got better, at least in the night. Ada would wake every three or four hours, and my body just got used to the broken six or seven hours of sleep (Also, I realise that in the grand scheme of things, this is pretty good - some mums have it so much more rough then me). And then when Ada was four and a half months old we went to Australia for three weeks to visit family and friends. The first night was horrendous. She, obviously, was all over the place and I think I had about two three hours sleep. I was so upset the next morning. My mum took Ada and I crawled back into bed with Dave and just cried. My emotional state was probably dictated by my sleep depravation, but I felt so so guilty that I had bought Ada half way across the world, trying to coerce her (in a completely non aggressive way) to sleep at a time when she wanted to be awake. In the end we just bought Ada to bed with us and she slept on me most of the night. But that Australia trip was probably the worst jet lag I've ever had. It gradually got better and by the time we were in Melbourne, she was (mostly) sleeping through the night once more. But then we had to do that twenty four hour plus flight again, and start the jet lag process all over again. Except this time I didn't have my Mum and Dave to take her while I slunk back into bed. I was in struggle town.

And then again, we got into a better sleeping pattern, slowly but surely. We did some sleep training and we were able to put her down at seven thirty and she would, ninety-nine per cent of the time, sleep through the night. The occasional wake ups when she had four teeth coming through, or was just having an 'off' night, and you're catapulted back to newborn days. 

So lack of sleep, in the end, wasn't as scary as I throught it would be. Like most things in life (mine anyway) it was the fear of the unknown that was worrisome - the reality is never as bad as you imagine it to be (a mantra I need to remind myself often). However, I will stake a claim though that parents (and insomniacs, probably) know the real value of sleep.  I mean really know the value. That one hours extra sleep before the alarm goes off after having been up for four hours with a teeth baby? Oh man, that's the sweetest dream.