no sleep, hold judgment

A blogger, Her Bad Mother, is one that I check out periodically and she is going thru some tough sleepless days and night due to motherhood.

One comment rang true in my life:
I'm 51, so I'm old and un-with it. But I had three kids 4 years apart (they are now 23, 25, & 27)one would not sleep during the night and rarely napped (she's 25 now & still loves to stay up all night) and one was a premie who had to be fed every two hours and it would take an hour to feed her because feeding would exhaust her. By the time I would finish nursing her and get her back to bed I would be lucky to 60 minutes before we had to start all over again. Guess what? You can only maintain that schedule for so long before sheer exhaustion takes hold. The wisdom here is You CANNOT do it alone. Get help. Pump. Have a friend, hubby, relative come and spend the night for a few nights and take that middle of the night feeding so you can get some uninterrupted sleep. After you get some sleep in you, take a nap when the kiddies nap. Get a sitter so you can nap. The answer here is call in the reinforcements. And yeah, those flashes of anger, all part of the territory. It will happen and then happen again, whether they are babies, children, or teen-agers/young adults. Get caught up on your sleep & your perspective will be much better. I promise.

After my son was born and had day/night confusion and I was on the verge of that crazy tiredness. My mom was my lifesaver, when my husband was out of town. She took the middle of the night feeding with a bottle of pumped milk and sometimes she would just use formula. Once you have a child, perspective can appear after just five hours of solid sleep. With eight hours sleep, one can rule the world. Or, at least run for VP.

Funny, I have always considered myself a fairly selfish person by putting my needs first. This has caused frustration and hurt in some relationships, but it has also protected and saved me, especially during those first months to a year of having a new baby.

So, that fine line between selfishness and self-preservation is not an occasion to judge one's attempt at motherhood or livelihood. Let us save the judgment for a later time. You know, when everyone is perfect and has gotten weeks of good sleep.