Ah, sleep. The elusive pleasure that seems but a distant memory. From about the third trimester of pregnancy on you can expect to no longer sleep the same way as you did before; ever, ever again. I know that sounds pretty dismal, but unless your children have moved away from home and forgotten your phone number, a full nights sleep will be a rare occurrence from late pregnancy on.
When you hit the final trimester it can feel like a comfortable sleep is something that can just not be obtained. The baby is moving, kicking, sitting on your bladder, sitting on your spine, or all of the above in some interesting combination. You are now suppose to sleep only on your side. For me that was normal, but I suddenly was much more comfortable on my back. You may experience leg cramps, frequent trips to the bathroom or simply the inability to find sleep. I began to get over emotional due to the lack of sleep and started taking naps over the lunch hour. My husband, the wonderful man, would bring me home at lunch, make and pack me a lunch while I slept, and then wake me just in time to return to work. My theory is that this is preparing you for what I like to call the survival time period.
Doctors, friends, and mothers all love to talk about the labour and how horrible it will be. The intense pain and the extended amount of time a women has to endure labour and birth. These stories are very true, in most cases, but it must be emphasized that each labour, even for the same women, is different. That being said, the labour last hours, in worst cases a couple days. The survival time period that follows, however, lasts weeks!! This is the period when the baby is going through womb with drawl. If you think about it from their point of view, they have been in a nice dark, warm, secure small space for the past 9 months. Suddenly they are in this vast cold expanse, the one person they know (mom) is now...over there some where... and they are not receiving food as conveniently. It is no wonder a baby gets upset so easily, and they certainly can't be expected to know the difference between night and day. The only indication of that before was that mom was a little more sedentary at that time of the day.
What does this mean for you? The sleep pattern, that you have spent the last couple decades becoming accustom to, is now out the window. Baby wakes up every couple hours, needs food, clean diapers and then back to bed. We are told, as primary care givers, to sleep when the baby sleeps. Given that they sleep more hours out of the day than the average adult then we should have no sleep deprivation issues, right? For me it was not the quantity, but the quality and the inability to convince my body that sleeping at one in the afternoon was okay. There was also all the added chores that now needed to be done, like the additional laundry, that were preying on my mind. Finally, the mother instinct starts kicking in. You start sleeping with one ear open, waiting to hear the baby call so you can tend to them right away. You start changing diapers half asleep, nursing, and falling asleep in the chair only to wake to a stiff neck.
The survival time period is when you will need all those prepared meals that were made at your freezer party. This is the time to say "yes" to offers of assistance and that friend or family member who want to coo over the newborn for an hour or two while you get some shut eye. My doctor kept telling me that the most important thing was for me to take care of myself; seems strange because you would think the priority was the baby, but it makes sense when you think about it. Luckily I had my husband around for the first week. He took care of me, so I could take care of our son. It was hard to accept his help sometimes, and I often felt like a huge pain asking him for things, but he helped me make it through. Just not sure how he did!
FBM
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