Taking the Scenic Route

I am to that point in pregnancy that I realize, no matter how bad my sleep was the night before, it is likely the best night sleep I will have in a long time.  The time when there is a voice that starts saying “I can’t wait to have the baby so I can finally get comfortable and get some decent sleep again” and, then, the voice of experience (for us who have had babies before) laughs hysterically at the notion that we will sleep better when the baby actually arrives.

It is sort of an amazing phenomena.  Our bodies are getting our minds ready for the schedules of a newborn before birth, simply by decreasing the size of our bladders, and thus the hours of sleep we are able to achieve in one chunk.  Also, as pregnancy goes on, our sleep is lighter and lighter because we can’t get comfortable, but it makes us much more accustomed to function without the deep sleep before the baby is here.  It also gets us used to sleeping more lightly, which will continue for years after you have kids. 

Before Zane, I could sleep through anything.  I could not conceive how co-sleeping would work because I was so worried I would sleep too heavy and roll over on him (I had done it with my cats and had the scratches to prove it).  I also was worried I wouldn’t hear my child crying in a crib in the next room.  Um, that isn’t a problem.  After birth, the slightest whimper will arouse you on some level.  When you co-sleep, you get much better sleep, but still wake up if your child starts breathing funny (which happened with Zane on a few occasions).  I am convinced that Zane would not be here if we had him in a crib in the other room because of the number of times during the night, in those early months, I would reach out my hand to wiggle him and he startled into breathing more normally.  I can’t imagine that I could have slept through him crying in the next room, but that closeness allowed me to hear really subtle differences.  I also would have never been able to relax enough if he was in the next room and would have eventually ‘passed out’ instead of sleeping, which isn’t good either.

I am fortunate to have a husband who is generous enough to not give me crap for taking long naps in the middle of the afternoon when I need them.  I know it has to be sort of annoying to have your spouse sort of check out for a few hours every day, but he has been great about it.  I don’t remember needing this much sleep with Zane, but I also wasn’t chasing after Zane during my waking hours either. lol.

One last note, I don’t think pregnant woman are as much ‘hormonal’ as they are just flat out ‘tired’.  I am much crankier when I am tired, and I spend a lot more time tired as a pregnant woman than I do normally.  I also spend a lot more time in pain, which also doesn’t put me in a joyful mood. 

One good thing, your sleep does get slightly better after having the baby, just not right away.  First you have to heal from the birth (I know I won’t be sleeping half on my stomach, half on my side for quite a while).  Then, it takes a few months for the baby to sleep more than 2 hours at a time.  It is NORMAL for a baby to do that.  You don’t want them to sleep longer than that because it puts them at a higher risk for SIDs.  (I cringe when people brag about their kids sleeping through the night early…it isn’t healthy for the baby to do that).  By about 6 months, they are sleeping quite a few more hours, and you might get the official ’sleeping through the night’ status (which, by the way, is not 8-10 hours that it was considered before kids, it is around 5 hours…but it will feel like a long time when it hits.)  So, around a year from now, my sleep will be much better, although it will probably not be what it was before kids until they have been out of the house for a few years.  (and even with them out of the house, you are still going to have some restless nights worried about them).