Sleep by Trish Smith

New mothers are warned about the lack of sleep, the lack of time you will have to yourself, and the endless loads of washing that wait for you on the laundry floor. A few of my close girlfriends have recently had babies, and I’m reminded of all those things that I didn’t cope well with way back when my girls were newborns, despite the warnings. Lack of sleep was the root of most of my problems. When you’re tired, you can’t cope with even the littlest things, like getting into the shower and realising that not only is it 2pm but your partner used up the last of the shampoo and you need to wash your hair because the baby projectile-vomited onto your head. Remember days like those? I would just cry. I would get out of the shower and wonder how it could possibly get much worse. Oh, no clean knickers left. Terrific.

I was taken completely by surprise by the strength of my emotions when I was a new mother. Looking back, I can see that it had a lot to do with not a lot of sleep. Those first six months or so were fairly crazy. It’s very unsettling to come from a structured, ordered sort of existence, where you go to work from 9 to 5 and catch up with friends on the weekend, to one where you never bother to make plans because phrases like “we’ll be there in fifteen minutes” are no longer useful to you. I was just talking to my sister in law, new mother to an eight week old boy, and I asked her how she was feeling.

“You can’t sit down and dwell on it because you’re too tired to, there’s no energy to think. And then you cry. Or you start giggling.” While we were chatting, her little darling took advantage of some nappy-off time to relieve himself of last night’s dinner. You can’t help but laugh at that. I have a photograph of a white t-shirt I was wearing when changing Maddie’s nappy on the change table. The pooh came flying straight out and got me right between the boobs. That was the day I started wearing an apron around the house.

These days I have the luxury of having my evenings to myself from about 8pm onwards. Both my kids were sleeping through from the age of one. From six months, they usually slept from midnight until 7am (though if I check my diary from those days, it was probably not that good!). I used to stay up, even though every fibre of my being was telling me to go to bed at 9pm and wake up and feed them at midnight. And today I can’t get to sleep before midnight. Well, I could, if I tried.

But I enjoy those hours, between 8pm and midnight. It’s the only time of the day I get to see my husband, and do the dishes, and read the paper, and surf the internet, or flip through a magazine, without being interrupted by pleas for another glass of milk or the latest version of “she said… yeah well she said…” Four hours a day that belong entirely to Trish the Person, not Trish the Mother. When I had little babies in the house, there were no hours that belonged to me. All my time was spent in the service of my family.

Occasionally I would leave the kids with my parents so I could go to the hairdressers or do the grocery shopping unencumbered by a screaming, hungry infant. But the rest of the time I felt completely at their beck and call, and I found that very difficult to deal with. There were some mothers in my New Mothers Group who would happily take their kids with them everywhere. One friend refused my offer to babysit her son while she went to the hairdressers – that’s ok, she said, I’ll take him with me, I just love his company. I couldn’t understand that. I still can’t. I admire it; if you are the sort of person who not only has the patience to be that attentive to your child and you also have the sort of child that you don’t feel you need a break from, well, good on you. I’m not like that; I do have a selfish bone in my body. I suspect it’s one of the big ones, like my pelvis. I need to have time away from my children, from that relentless dependency. I feel myself going a little crazy if I don’t take breaks every so often.

It’s much easier now that they’re at school and I have a part-time job and have joined the gym and made regular plans to have lunch with my girlfriends. I didn’t like being ‘just a mum’. And by that I mean ‘only a mum’. I need to have other parts to me. Sure, there are days when I wish I didn’t have to work so I could focus more fully on my family. But the reality is I’m a much more balanced person when I’ve got more than just my apron on.

Trish

Coffee Break is a parent’s insight to life in Canberra.  If you’d like to contribute, we’d love to share your view of the world with other like-minded mums and dads.  Just send your contributions through to feedback@canberrakids.com.au along with your contact details.

The information on this webpage is provided by the advertisers listed on this site. Canberra Kids takes no responsibility for the accuracy of the information. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect those of Canberra Kids.

For more information please see our privacy policy and disclaimer.