No Sleep for Me
I am so tired.
The baby is probably teething or if not then the heat is getting on her wits, because after sleeping her nights soundly with just one or two meals for weeks now, she has suddenly began to wake up several times a night, just to scream her lungs out. She is also cranky all day long and is a total nightmare when the naptime comes. It's almost as if her cot is her biggest enemy in the world. The moment her back touches the mattress, the screaming begins.
Boyfriend is a lot of help during the days, but like most men he has been blessed with incredible ability to sleep through any amount of noise. So I'm the one who wakes up to feed the baby and tries to calm her down at night. Now after almost a week of badly slept nights, they're beginning to get to me. I find myself snapping at boyfriend for absolutely no reason and I have a really short temper with the baby as well. I feel like crying every time she begins to scream and won't stop. This reminds me all too well of her first very colicky three months. I used to not sleep for 48 hours or more and somehow we got through that. So I try to make myself believe that we'll get through this crankiness as well.
My school will begin in one and half weeks and I don't know how I'll manage with this little sleep. I read from one parenting book that being a parent is unlike any challenge you have ever faced, because as a parent even when you feel like you've come to the end of the road and have no more energy, no more tricks up your sleeve, no more ideas, no more in you to give, you can't back out of it. You will just have to dig deeper and find the last drop of energy to deal with your feverish screaming child and although I have only been a mother for the last seven months, I have already experienced that - over and over again. I could never have imagined how hard this can be. I knew it's not a walk in the park to be a mother, that it is a lot of hard work, but I guess we can never really understand the magnitude of the responsibility of a parent until we become part of that group. Perhaps it is the extreme challenge of taking care of a tiny human being and trying to teach her everything she needs to know to be able to live on her own one day, that makes it so amazing, so rewarding, the best thing that ever happened to us.
As I think back on the first months and how hard everything was and how afraid I was that I'd make a mistake, that I would bathe the baby too seldomly or too often or that I'd put the diapers on too tight, it seems so far away. I look back at myself like I was a completely different person. Perhaps I was.
The baby is probably teething or if not then the heat is getting on her wits, because after sleeping her nights soundly with just one or two meals for weeks now, she has suddenly began to wake up several times a night, just to scream her lungs out. She is also cranky all day long and is a total nightmare when the naptime comes. It's almost as if her cot is her biggest enemy in the world. The moment her back touches the mattress, the screaming begins.
Boyfriend is a lot of help during the days, but like most men he has been blessed with incredible ability to sleep through any amount of noise. So I'm the one who wakes up to feed the baby and tries to calm her down at night. Now after almost a week of badly slept nights, they're beginning to get to me. I find myself snapping at boyfriend for absolutely no reason and I have a really short temper with the baby as well. I feel like crying every time she begins to scream and won't stop. This reminds me all too well of her first very colicky three months. I used to not sleep for 48 hours or more and somehow we got through that. So I try to make myself believe that we'll get through this crankiness as well.
My school will begin in one and half weeks and I don't know how I'll manage with this little sleep. I read from one parenting book that being a parent is unlike any challenge you have ever faced, because as a parent even when you feel like you've come to the end of the road and have no more energy, no more tricks up your sleeve, no more ideas, no more in you to give, you can't back out of it. You will just have to dig deeper and find the last drop of energy to deal with your feverish screaming child and although I have only been a mother for the last seven months, I have already experienced that - over and over again. I could never have imagined how hard this can be. I knew it's not a walk in the park to be a mother, that it is a lot of hard work, but I guess we can never really understand the magnitude of the responsibility of a parent until we become part of that group. Perhaps it is the extreme challenge of taking care of a tiny human being and trying to teach her everything she needs to know to be able to live on her own one day, that makes it so amazing, so rewarding, the best thing that ever happened to us.
As I think back on the first months and how hard everything was and how afraid I was that I'd make a mistake, that I would bathe the baby too seldomly or too often or that I'd put the diapers on too tight, it seems so far away. I look back at myself like I was a completely different person. Perhaps I was.