It takes me a long time to fall asleep at night. Once the baby falls asleep, we put him down and hope and pray that he will stay asleep. My body remains taut and humming, ready to spring to action with a pacifier, arms for rocking, or the last resort, a boob. Right now I’m not even bothering to go to bed, because this child has not slept longer than 30 minutes all day, and there is no indication that he plans on doing so tonight.
As I lay awake, trying to progressively relax my muscles from toe to crown, I craft brilliant posts in my head. I plan to write them here the next day, stunning you all with my witticisms about this new state of parenthood. In my mind I write pages and pages of heartwrenching memoirs for my child to read when he is older, so he can marvel at the inspiring writer his mother was, despite the lack of sleep, muscle tone, makeup, or even combed hair.
Then, the next day I wake, feed the child, then try to fall back to sleep. At some point I will give up and throw on a robe, try to choke back some breakfast, and continue to entertain the child. Suddenly, it’s 5:00 P.M., and I look forward to another night of the endless rounds of soothing, rocking, pacifying and shushing it will take to get the child to sleep once more. And my body is still in a state of continuous alert.
P.S. I do love him so, don’t worry. I’m not going to package him up in a box and Fedex him to my mother.
Girl, I so hear you. Especially about the difficulty falling asleep after putting the baby down. We have a co-sleeper so after I put her down I simply turn on my side and lay awake watching her to make sure she doesn’t spit up or fuss, is still breathing, etc.
It’s amazing how the days blur together when you’ve got a new boss. And the milktruck comment was too funny, my husband got a kick out of it.
Today I got on the treadmill and walked for 2 miles just to feel like a human again. I’m slowly introducing pre-partum habits into my post-partum self to see what I can re-integrate of my former life.
Wow. Motherhood is hard (but of course the little guys are worth it).
I remember that… your body being unable to fall asleep because your mind just knew that the second you drifted off, you would receive the “mama milk stat page”!! I know we all keep telling you, so if it is getting old, tell us to shut up already, but it will get easier…. slowly and slightly, but it will… in the meantime, keep those adorable pics coming!!
The natural light on the beach photo is awesome. I would love to have light like that by which to take photos of my kids!!
The quiz we all seem be blogging about is a quiz you make up yourself at (I think this is the URL) http://www.quizyourfriends.com. You create the questions. We all happen to be making up “How Well Do You Know Me?” quizzes. But feel free to create a “What Are My Recreational Drug Habits?” or “How Kinky Am I?” quiz or something.
By the way, FedEx is notoriously hard on packaged babies. I like UPS.
It eventually gets better, but I am in the same boat with my 4.5 month old. I am lucky to get 2 hours of sleep before a call for the milk truck goes up. My kids Nurse Practicioner said that my son should be sleeping 7 hours a night without waking … yea right!!! Somebody please tell him that!
I love internet moms.