You think you’re doing ok for the first few weeks. You can still form sentences and you haven’t started throwing things. Then one day, when you’ve burst into tears because your toddler dropped their bowl of cereal and you’ve decided it’s necessary to call security because the bloke on the supermarket checkout wouldn’t give you an extra bag, you’ll realise the sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn and a toddler has started to wear you down.
You’re not ‘tired’. ‘Tired’ is when you’ve worked a 12-hour day at the office without stopping for lunch. ‘Tired’ is when you had to wake up at 5am to meet your friend for boot camp. ‘Tired’ is for people who don’t have small children. Those people, bless their cotton socks, need a good nap.
You are exhausted. Shattered. Stunningly fatigued. You don’t need a nap. You need an induced coma. You haven’t slept for more than three hours in a row in weeks, if not months and you’re fantasising about that magical four-hour stretch. You’re convinced that if you could just get four hours in a row, you might be ok. Your head throbs with idiocy and it feels like a wad of wet toilet paper is wedged behind your eyeballs, slowly squeezing them out of their sockets. Rusty razor wire drags over your eyeballs with every blink.
There’s no such thing as “sleep when the baby sleeps” for you. Even if your baby chooses to occasionally sleep (big IF) you won’t be closing your eyes. As your tiny babe gets a lovely refreshing nap, there‘s another small person who, at a minimum, requires you to have your eyes open. You’re doing the night shift with the baby and the day shift with the toddler and it sucks.
Accept it
This is your life now. You are the tired lady. For the foreseeable future, you will be running on empty so it’s best to stop fighting it and make your peace. Scrawl, “this too will pass” across your bathroom mirror and repeat it to yourself throughout the day. You are no longer a person who “needs 8 hours to survive”. You are a mum and you will learn to live like some Tibetan monk who only sleeps when the moon is full. While it’s going to be an eternity until you feel truly rested again, the bone-deep zombification will ease in a few months. Your baby will eventually sleep in longer stretches and you’ll start to feel slightly less like the living dead.
Embrace the TV
Now is not the time to be sanctimonious about screen time. If you’re so tired you can’t even form full sentences, your child will be better off with Justine, Teo and Big Ted. I’m currently co-parenting with my TV and I will not feel guilty about it. I can make up for it with wondrous, educational experiences when I’ve had more than 45 minutes sleep in a row.
Get outside
It’s very difficult to fall asleep, sitting up on a park bench. It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. As a bonus, your kids might tire themselves out and everyone can have a nap when you get home.
Get creative with playtime
You are a sick patient and you need Dr Toddler to bandage your leg. You are the baby and your tiny Mummy is going to tuck you into bed. You are a sleeping monster and your little one has to be very quiet and careful as they creep around you or you might wake up and bite them! You are Sleeping Beauty and your little Prince must find a magic potion to wake you up. You are going camping and your toddler is in charge of building the tent around you as you sleep.
You get the idea; anything that involves you lying down while they do all the work.
Outsource
Exploit all and any family members who happen to live close by. If you’re lucky enough to have people willing to care for your children, you need to pack them up and drop them off. Don’t think twice about this. Get in the car now. Call your mum or your sister or your best friend and tell them to be waiting in the drive-way ready to catch your children as your car rolls past. You won’t even come to a full stop, such is the need to get home to sleep. On behalf of all the women who don’t have the luxury of on-call babysitters, I am begging you not to waste this gift. Even a few hours will help you feel less murderous.
Schedule your sleep
I recently turned down a coffee date with my girlfriends because I had an appointment with my bed. I told them three days in advance about my plan to be asleep. My son would be in daycare and I had no other commitments that day. I was giddy with excitement. I planned to put my baby down for her nap then I was going to snuggle down in a pile of unfolded laundry and go to sleep. The breakfast would be crusting on the table and the dust bunnies would be busy making baby dust bunnies, but I would be sleeping. It went perfectly to plan. I got exactly 93 minutes and it was glorious.
Whatever you do, nothing will replace real, life-saving sleep, but you can find ways to survive this. Hang in there, zombie woman. This too will pass.
This post was first published at Kidspot
21 comments
[…] need eases. The constant supervision, the incessant touching, the never sleeping… that all gets better, and one day you’ll be sitting there and realise you […]
[…] How to survive on no sleep – Lauren (great name!) from The Thud is at it again with her hilarious and oh-so-true take on parenthood, this time how to get by when your kids conspire against you to deprive you of your precious sleep. […]
[…] 6. Wake up when you have finished sleeping. […]
[…] How to survive on no sleep – Lauren (great name!) from The Thud is at it again with her hilarious and oh-so-true take on parenthood, this time how to get by when your kids conspire against you to deprive you of your precious sleep. […]
Do you really promise it will pass? Everyone said they’ll sleep better once they turn one, but now they’re two (twins). You make it through the feeding, baby illnesses, teething etc… Little Miss has decided she’s not going to wear a nappy or pj’s. Just leave her the experts say…hmm it’s 7 degrees at night. Why didn’t she try nudity during summer? Little Mr has started climbing out of his cot. At 1.30am one is nude and the other is playing. This will pass, this isn’t permanent, it will get better. What did we ever do before Red Bull and V!!
This couldn’t have been more timely. The first paragraph described me to a tee. I was that mum literally bursting in to tears this morning when my toddler (for the 5th time this week) woke for the day at 4am and, in the process, woke the baby – which I had just just put down after being up with her all night. “This too shall pass…”
I was sleep deprived for the better part of a decade. They were right about childbirth: it’s amaaaaazing what our bodies can do. Getting outside was always, always my go-to. x
Oh, I don’t miss this.
I’m SO glad it passed & it did.
As a first time Mum you think it never will & by the time you have your 2nd you think, I’ve got this, I did it already.
Then reality, you could cope being a zombie with the 1st but now you need to be coherent with a toddler expecting answers to obscure questions, like why are there clouds, what is wood made from, why are there ants… ?
I was totally thrown & it was no longer about not just being sleep deprived but my brain was actually required to compute.
Throw in a bubba that suffered bad reflux & had 4hrly feeds till he was 12mths old… NOT EVEN KIDDING
Tired was a serious understandment.
But besides the odd nightmare or what not we are 3 weeks from 5yrs & 8yrs in couple months.
We now get 8am sleepins on weekends & I can’t tell you how I thought it never was going to happen.
So until then, whatever works Hun. It shall pass, I promise!!! X
OMG you are just teasing me with the 8am sleep ins… The worst part of my day is waking up at some ungodly hour and calculating how many hours I’ve got to go until I can close my eyes again.
This sleep deprivation is not necessary and not ok and not funny. I too was shocked with my first baby and how easy it WASN’T – see a sleep consultant!! It will change your life.
…and when you finally get some sleep (after 3.5 years for me) your greedy little body just wants more and more, perpetuating the “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus” sensation!
IT’S NEVER ENOUGH!!!
Where were you with all these tips when I had my kids!!! You are just gorgeous and frankly you completely suck you are gorgeous even when you are tired and are sleeping!!!
Love ya guts Lauren!
Hahaha, love you too!! xxx
Yes! I feel you. This too shall pass is the only thing that will get you through. Hold tight!
I will sleep one day. I will sleep one day. I will sleep one day.
THIS! Life right now. I can’t even form sentences to comment. x
Krissy, darling, how are you doing? It’s rough those first few weeks, isn’t it? It took me ages to feel lucid enough to write anything down. Gah, it’s hard! Hope you’re getting some help lovely xxx
It may sound weird but a night nanny service was a godsend for us. There are lots of companies that offer this service with highly qualified and experienced nannies. Might be worth looking in to. Getting a full night’s sleep every few weeks saved my sanity.
This. Is. My. Life! Today I fell asleep while sitting at a red traffic light. I had about 3 minutes of blissfully sleep before the guy behind me started honking like a mad man. Queue onslaught of questions about my sleeping habits from the inquisitive 4 year old… It was totally worth it!
You know it’s bad when you’re scratching for MINUTES of sleep here and there.