1.Sleep when the baby sleeps.
2. Sleeping like a baby.
After having a baby, these are two phrases which I see from a totally different point of view. I wrote a post on sleep, “ Parallel universe of no sleep” way back before I became a mom. I had no idea then what surviving on no sleep actually feels like.
Throughout my pregnancy I was blessed with perfect sleep. Yes. Till my delivery I was doing 9 hour stints with very generous naps in the day time as I had to be on rest then. At that time I did not realise what a blessing those extra hours of sleep where.
Now , whoever wrote the phrase about sleep when the baby sleeps was definitely not a primary caregiver to a newborn or a baby under one without the support of a “village”.
Because when the baby is sleeping, you have to take care of your basic hygiene, plan and make and plan baby’s food, take care of baby laundry ( you are blessed if you have somebody to help you with that.
After doing all this if you are lucky you may get 10 to 15 minutes to get a shut eye before you are needed again.
In fact I am posting this by giving up my 15 minutes morning rest before baby wakes up from his nap!
I know this may sound like a rant from a sleep deprived post partum mum. But this is a reality about which I had no warning.
I was clueless about the sleep sacrifice that being a mother involves. And the amount of patience. Because when you are not sleeping, your brain does not get time to reset and function at its full potential.
But, in spite of being a sleep deprived, hyper anxious person, I can count motherhood amongst the best things in my life.
The amount of love that has been flooding my heart on a daily basis since last October is something that I can’t really express in words.
The love is tiding me through the sleepless nights. It is helping me make the countless sacrifices. The love is also helping with the struggles of the intense feeling of losing my sense of self….
My sweet little baby boy has made me realise what selfless love actually feels like. It melts your heart. Metamorphoses you. It changes you to something from which you can’t return to your older version.
At the same time, you are still the same person but you are not.
This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2.0
