Friday 17 July 2020

Mommy is sleeping

I'm sitting here in the darkness, exhausted, fuzzy, burnt out. It's late on a Friday morning and I can hear the world ticking by. I feel guilty, lazy, lonely, as I lay here, in the silence watching his tiny chest rise and fall, counting the seconds every time his breathing pauses, methodically repositioning him when he is gasping, timing the jerks and strange outbursts of laughter. I can see the sunlight, flooding every crevice it finds in the blackout blinds. I can hear the sounds off the morning birds, my husband taking conference calls and video meetings on the patio, the nanny and my baby playing in the living room. I start to get flashbacks of the loneliness I felt being a new mother, I remember endless nights being up to feed the baby. I remember coming near to the end of my maternity leave and wanting to soak up those late night moments of just me and the baby. I remember those lazy mornings when I could nap with the baby and feel no guilt, after all, everyone kept telling me to "sleep when the baby sleeps", but what I remember most of all was thinking it was ok because "one day you will miss this stage of life." I love my children more than anything in the world, they are my everything, but I am sooooo tired! I have a child who's at nearly six years old had the same sleep pattern he did as a newborn - 5 maybe 6 hours max and he wakes up, on a good night he goes back to sleep right away (like a dream feed) on a rough night he stays awake for hours and then crashes for another 5 hours sometime during the day. I still spend much of my time prepping formula, instead of bottles I wash bags, I sterilize soothers, I even still end up trapped under a sleeping child on a regular basis. I am grateful for all the amazing skills my son has, I am so ecstatic at the gains he has made and continues to make but just for one moment I want to complain about the exhaustion.

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