The baby daze

In the weeks leading up to bub's birth I knew I'd be sleep deprived once she arrived. Every second person I spoke to was reminding me, just incase I forgot. I thought I was prepared for it. In fact by the end of my pregnancy I was willing her to come early because I was so over spending my days lazing around the house and having afternoon naps. Ha, what I would give to be able to have those weeks back now.

To be honest I don't think you can ever be prepared for the sleepless nights a newborn brings. At least not the first time around. Perhaps I'll be a little more equipped next time because I know what to expect, but I'm sure it'll still knock me for six. 

Those first few days in hospital are seriously a blur. Two words - cluster feeding. Sure it's great for bringing your milk in, but its so not great if you want to get any sleep. I don't even remember T being there during the day time because I was so sleep deprived from the nights. I know I fell asleep while feeding her twice. The first time I woke because a midwife was taking her off me to put her back in the crib and the second time I woke because I remembered I was feeding her and freaked out. I'm pretty sure the second time was only a micro sleep, but when I woke I was so confused as to whether I was really awake or whether I was dreaming. I remember sitting there for a good five minutes trying to work out what was going on. 

By the third day I broke down in a fit of tears asking T if the birth had really happened and she was really my baby. I was so out of it from not sleeping that I wasn't sure if I'd made the whole thing up. A few hours later the dr came by to do my discharge paperwork and I told him about my breakdown (thinking I was going crazy) and he said it was perfectly normal especially given my unexpected birth. In fact he said he'd be more worried if I hadn't had a good cry. I can't tell you how reassuring that conversation was.

When I got home it was easier at first because I had T's help during the day so I could have small naps here and there. It was up to me at night time, but surprisingly enough I was managing to get by on only a few hours of broken sleep quite well. Until T went back to work.

Cue major breakdown.

He works 12 hour shifts so I had to look after her all day and then all night by myself. All on about 2-3 hours of broken sleep. Needless to say that didn't work very well.

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I was so tired I was a walking zombie half the time. Pretty quickly I became quite emotional. I'd burst into tears numerous times throughout the day and often in the early hours of the morning when I couldn't get her to go back to sleep after a feed. I became resentful of T because he was still getting a minimum of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, if not more. I started getting seriously depressed and anxious. I honestly believe my sleep deprivation played a part in me developing postnatal depression. At the time I just thought everything was my fault and that I wasn't coping.

Love to Dream recently conducted national research* into the relationship between sleep and new mums. I have to say the results sound very familiar to me and I'm somewhat glad I'm not the only one who's gone through this experience. 53.6% of new mums said lack of sleep had a negative impact on their lives. Sleep deprivation can seriously affect your everyday life and not just in the sense that you need a lot more caffeine to survive the day. The research uncovered a number of negative impacts including:

• 63% of mums become overly emotional {like I did}
• 58% feel grumpy or angry
• 36% say it impacts their relationship with their partner/husband 
• 33% suffer ill health {like I did}
• 30% feel unable to cope {like I did}
• 27% feel depressed {like I did}

The good news is that the baby daze as I call it does pass. Of course I didn't believe it would when I was smack bang in the middle of it all. But with a lot of patience and a number of different tactics we got through it. Now I have a baby who sleeps up to eleven hours a night and rarely wakes unless shes teething or sick. Oh happy days. I actually sleep long enough to have dreams now (pretty weird ones, but its still better than none).

Disclosure - I did not receive any compensation for this post.

* National survey of 600 mums aged 18-45; questions based on babies being less than three months of age