Dreaming of Peaceful Nights

“There are days I feel so tired, so completely worn out, I can’t think. I can’t put sentences together. I feel like a shadow of myself and I can’t muster up my personality. All I want to do is close my eyes. When I left the hospital, a friend said, “I hope we get to see you and the baby soon, when Kate had her third baby no-one saw her for 6 months…” I remember laughing, “No, not me, come have tea next week.” Now I’m only 3 weeks in and I relate completely to Kate. My home life is so hectic and demanding, I don’t know if I can see anyone. It’s just too tiring making small talk, getting dressed up, running from child to baby to child. I’m in a blur of tiredness, and everyone is fading out of focus. Except the mouth on my breast… my Joseph.’

Everything is easier in retrospect. I wrote this at the height of 6 weeks of sleep deprivation. In my worst moments, I was up every hour or two, sometimes only just finishing the feeding, burping, changing routine when it was time for his next feed. Joe battled terribly with winds and unknown pains at night, pulling his little legs up, crying and squealing while I walked in circles, rubbing his tummy, rocking him, until he exhaustedly fell asleep and I would try do the same. There were times I felt like an alien, a possessed woman. I would literally sink to the floor with exhaustion, bump into walls, and mix up my words so I sounded drunk. I have cried at the drop of a pin (it might wake the baby and I’ve just put him down!) and sobbed into my husband’s arms as he arrived home. “Please just take them away from me. Please just let me sleep.’ Poor guy. Poor kids. Poor me. My eldest got to the point when she would look suspiciously into my eyes at the slightest hint of moisture and say, “Are you crying? Are you sad?” I would have to explain that mommy was just tired. Very, very tired.

Of course being tired comes with the territory of being a new mother. It’s expected, joked about and misunderstood by anyone who hasn’t been there themselves. This is not the tiredness of working hard or partying late, it’s tiredness that comes accompanied by worry and relentless stress: "Is my baby OK?, why isn’t he sleeping?, what can I do differently?" And, my personal favourite: "Am I getting him into a bad routine by feeding him every time he wakes up in the desperate hope that he’ll fall asleep and let me sleep…”

And then suddenly at the mythical 6 week mark, he settled down. After I had investigated everything, from colic to chiropractor, reflux to lactose intolerance, he started sleeping from 7pm to 1am. Of course, he still wakes and feeds two to three hourly from then onwards, but, as any mother knows, a good three or four hours of uninterrupted sleep is like the 8 hours sleep we used to take for granted pre-babies. I finally feel a little more like myself again. I’ve been to see a movie, gone to book club and even watched Memoirs of a Geisha on DVD - without falling asleep! I do still have bad days (and nights), when at least one of my three children keeps my husband and I awake and we spend the night traipsing back and forth between bedrooms, bleary eyed and irritable. Lack of sleep doesn’t make me the nicestŚ person to be around, but quite honestly, I am doing the best I can. And although that sometimes feels like less than enough, it is one of the strongest lessons I have taken out of motherhood. I am doing my best, and that is good enough.

By Corinne Lamoral