Then the baby was born and you’re all swept up in that. Calls to make. Morphine to process. Grandparents visiting. All that jazz. And you expect to be up all night at intervals cause – baby. You know that babies wake up every couple of hours.  Says so on the box. And you’re determined to get it all down pat so you both get up at the feeds, C did the changes. We were a team. And it was awesome. And then the next day comes and you actually haven’t slept for what? more than 50 hours now? And you know the advice – sleep when the baby sleeps. And the baby is actually doing decent 3-4 hour sleeps. In fact, she was doing so well we had to wake her for feeds (midwives are so mean about that! Pulling all their clothes off and turning em upside down til they wake up crying )And OMG! I could not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a stretch without being woken up by someone. Midwives come in to do checks. People keep trying to give you meals. And all these other people keep needing things from you – hearing tests, blood tests, Anti D injections. Noone was remotely apologetic about it either. My room was right near the lifts so even at night there was constant noise and loud conversations.

And by that night I was climbing the walls. All I’d wanted all day was a 2 hour nap. Just 2 hours! And every time things would quieten down I’d quickly grab the chance to sleep too. And no matter what, without fail, 20 mins in someone would come in for some reason. Just 2 hours! In the end, I physically couldn’t stay awake any more for feeds and the baby wouldn’t settle that night. She kept crying and the midwives were saying she was hungry and I would say that I’d just fed her and they were like, she’s still hungry. I had to concede defeat at 3am because I could no longer physically stay awake to trust myself to not drop the baby. That’s when we discovered she loved the dummy (I had really not wanted to use one but you know, after being awake for 72 hours or something and the baby instantly quietens … yeah). I signed over all kinds of clearances to let the nursery feed her 1 formula feed and they took her away. And I sat and cried. Because all I’d wanted all day was just 2 hours of sleep! And I’d chased it, literally chased it with “just do this and then you can sleep”. And C was all well, go to sleep then!

And then at 6am they wheeled back in the most sedate little baby you wouldn’t believe had been a holy terror not 3 hours earlier and the midwife announces, “Here’s your BABY!”. And I guess I got 3 hours sleep so … Win?

Many days now, today included, I feel like I’m playing that game again: I’ll just do [x] and then I can [have my coffee/eat lunch/do some work/ reply to that email etc]. Where X = feed baby/comfort baby/ change baby and wash everything in sight due to lack of baby bodily fluids integrity/ put baby down to nap] And I’ll chase that “and then I can” all damn day. Especially like today when baby’s naps are not long enough to do anything other than go to the toilet and boil the kettle. I’ve realised that I’m drinking far too much coffee because some days all I want is to sit and enjoy just 1 hot cup of coffee. And 6 lukewarm cups aren’t the same thing.

I’ve decided that since I need to figure out how to study fulltime (plus run Twelfth Planet Press) with baby come April 1, I might start tracking just how many hours of work I actually do in a day. I know I’m likely to be undervaluing what I’m actually doing. I figure that the average or the cumulative is probably more than I think. Today, I tracked the time in minutes and it was 24. And I know some people will tell me – hey! You got 24 minutes to do work! And you’re complaining? So uh, yeah. All hail my 24 minutes plus the time I spent writing this post!

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