New Mums’ Sleep Challenge

Wow. Where to begin on this topic! If you’re truly lucky like one of my friends, you’re in the elite few and your baby may be sleeping in 5 hour bursts at the age of 4 weeks. Or if you’re like most of us you’re in the same dinky boat as nearly everyone else and your little one is waking every 2 hours, give/take. This is ‘normal’. I say normal loosely because what’s normal for one baby is not normal for another. Let’s say ‘average’.

We were blessed with twins so we had the usual issues of one waking the other. We found they woke every 1.5 – 2 hours throughout the night. I breastfed the girls perched on a twin feeding pillow with the help of my mum who stayed with us for the first six weeks. Sometimes they would wake about a half hour apart and I fed them separately one by one. This made it easy not having to rip off all my clothes from the waist up in the middle of winter to don the sexy (but cold) twin feeding pillow but it meant I had only a 1/2 hour chance to grab a wink or two before the next feed. Usually I had a 30-45min window to sleep every 2 hours. I can tell you after a few weeks of having shallow, broken sleep, you may be feeling slightly lost, foggy or irritable. The classic and well known catchphrase “Baby Brain” is thrown around. It’s not Baby Brain. When I was dossing on a mate’s floor in London years ago, woken up constantly throughout the night by flatmates coming and going, I had the same lost, foggy feeling trying to function throughout the day. It isn’t baby brain. It’s sleep deprivation! I couldn’t find files at work or get my head together to be anywhere half as efficient as normal. You need sleep. Period. So don’t decide to mop the floor or hang washing out when you have the golden opportunity for a half hour nap with your baby during the day. Women push, push, push and we think we have this vast untapped reserve of energy that will never run out. Oh faux pas! It will, and when you need it most, like wind-down for night time and making dinner. 4:00pm was my brick wall. I didn’t know whether I was Arthur or Shirley Temple! NAP. Nap every single chance you can get without a morsel of guilt!