When does a mommy rest?
Certainly not in the first six weeks of a baby’s life when baby is still trying to figure out his place in the world: when crying replaces the soft humming of the computer, the sound of mommy’s favourite TV program or the still, quiet night; when baby thinks that lumpy, hard chests are way more comfortable than a soft cot (or anywhere else for that matter); when mommy’s bed is just so much better than baby’s own; when, like all three of my children, baby has reflux – every time he lies down he ends up sleeping in his own throw-up and mommy has to change his clothes and bedding 50 times a day; when mommy spends hours washing the floor, couch, carpet and bed, or wherever else baby’s projectile vomit has landed in mommy’s once beautiful, unsoiled home. And don’t forget the constant nappy changes – I didn’t know that a human being could pooh that much! Newborn babies must pooh at least eight times a day. Man! You would never get off the toilet if that carried on into adulthood.
Maybe rest will come when baby is a bit older and learns the difference between day and night, and stops waking up every three hours to eat. Maybe. But ‘parent irony’ soon kicks in: when my twin boys finally learnt how to sleep through the night my three year old daughter forgot. So no rest for mommy. Then, when all three children finally sleep through the night again, mommy still can’t sleep: she finds herself waking up at every little grunt and groan and then lying awake waiting to see if baby is going to want a midnight bottle … 2am bottle … 3am bottle. So baby sleeps and mommy doesn’t. To confound matters, hubby can’t sleep – this too becomes mommy’s problem.
Maybe it gets better the older mommy’s children get. Maybe not. Inevitably, one or more of mommy’s children will contract some sickness from somewhere and mommy is up all night again. My oldest is almost four and I can imagine a hundred different scenarios that go way into her young adult years and beyond, that would keep me up at night.
So when does a mommy sleep? Who knows?
