Life with a Newborn

Let’s talk about after my first child’s birth, when I didn’t sleep for 48 hours. Hormones, I guessed, or the hypervigilance that over took me. Or maybe being in a hospital where nurses come in every hour for me, often drawing blood, and the next hour for baby. Everything in the room beeps and glows, always with the lights. We had to get out of there.

Thankfully my birth was somewhat uneventful, no complications. This included back labor, never dilating to a 10, but I didn’t need pain meds or any follow up care for body damage. We had a few weeks of sleepy baby, though my nervous system made it hard for me to really rest, and then her personality came out. She screamed every 20-40 minutes as walked her all night over the tile floors. I got stone bruises, sore feet, had a milky sweaty chest, always. My arms were tired and achy and brain frazzled from all the screaming and trying to figure her out.

She eats, she’s loved, she’s growing and she poops. Why is my baby so malcontent? What is wrong with me? Because of the isolation of new parenthood including a husband working 60 hours a week, a baby who yelled a lot, and the fact that I didn’t trust myself to drive on 30 minute blocks of sleep, I didn’t know that babies do this. Yes, mine is at the extreme of the spectrum, but she isn’t supposed to be sleeping “through the night” anyhow.

I remember balking when my best friend bemoaned her similar aged baby, who at 5 mos started waking up twice a night. What? You mean your baby has been sleeping for hours at a time? Your “tired” has got to be a different kind of tired than mine.

So I’d just let her nurse, fall asleep in the bed or couch and sleep just 10 minutes. I felt like an animal, with my little darling child attached to me at all times. Literally sucking the life out of me, which sounds dramatic but also true. The weight fell off of me quickly nursing that kid, and the sanity went right along with it. I had to get several fillings the year after her birth, not being careful enough to replenish my own calcium. There just wasn’t much “me” left, especially after the 5 years of combined pregnancy and nursing of both my children.

I didn’t know I deserved help, I didn’t even ask for it, except in angry demands of my husband when he was home. I assumed that as a long term nanny who had studied parenting at length in college (and in my free time), should be able to do it on my own. I was so wrong, It took a decade to start getting back to myself. I want more for other mothers and parents. They so deserve it.