“Sleepless in Schwechat”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

tired woman(Original diary excerpt from 25th October 2015)

So according to my husband I need to “accept the fact our babies are not sleepers” and then I will be able to handle it better. I, however, am no where near ready to do this. I still believe that one day Baby M is going to close his beautiful eyes and not open them again (or atleast not cause me to open mine) until the next morning (and by morning I mean after 7am!). At the moment I don’t see how giving up that hope will help me?!

On the other hand hubby apparently accepted it a long time ago and he does seem to handle the lack of sleep better than me so maybe there is something in it.

To me dealing with the sleep thing is like coping with a loss. I am grieving for my former late night, lazy morning self.

With that in mind I had a look on www.grief.com at the stages of grief by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler and their words really did resonate-especially if we change the word day to night.

“We wonder how we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day“.

For those that don’t know, the 5 stages of grief are described as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

I think I am somewhere between the denial and anger stage! I certainly like the idea of this:

“Denial is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle” and it’s true. By believing each night when I put him down that this will be the night he sleeps through I am somehow preserving my sanity!

Unfortunately I am finding myself getting angry too. Especially on those nights I am extra tired or have work to do that I am just not getting to. I find myself shouting at the baby and on occasion have had to leave him crying in his cot and leave the room to calm myself down. That’s scary and so illogical. I know he’s not doing it on purpose and I know he can’t understand me and even if he could shouting never helps but it’s how I feel. I probably shouldn’t admit that but I decided to be completely honest when I started this blog so there it is. I am an awful Mother.

Lack of sleep is no excuse but there’s a reason they use it as a form of torture. Sleep deprivation makes you say and do things you probably shouldn’t.

I’m pretty sure I’ve done a bit of “Bargaining” too. ‘If he sleeps through the night tonight I promise I will never moan about getting up early again’ ‘If he sleeps through tonight I’ll be way more attentive and do nothing but play with him all day tomorrow’. This phase is full of the ‘what if’s’ and ‘if only’s’ too … If only I hadn’t given him a dummy, if only I had never fed him right before lying him down to sleep, what if we had put him in his own room earlier, if only I hadn’t stopped breastfeeding so soon. But let’s face it you could go on forever here….what if he’d been born on a Friday instead of a Saturday, if only he’d been born in the morning then he’d know night time was for sleeping-you get my drift?! But I’m pretty sure we’ve all tried to make a trade atleast once in our child’s life. Wait until the weaning starts….if you just eat this one spoonful now, you don’t have to have anything green for the next 2 days.

Still, the more I read about these stages the more I believe I have to go through them in order to survive this sleep deprivation, which I no longer truly believe is ‘just a stage’. I mean I could forever blame it on teeth or a growth spurt or a cold but even if those reasons are all true it doesn’t help me sleep does it?

So I think, for once (and do not tell him I said this) my husband might be right. I have to try and embrace my non-sleeping babies (they’ll make it up to me one day right?! Perhaps they’ll not be such hellish teenagers if I learn to cope with their lack of sleeping?? I’m bargaining again!)

According to Kubler-Ross and Kessler the Acceptance stage “is about accepting the reality [that your nights of 10 hour sleeps are] gone and recognising that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where [we don’t sleep]. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust.”

Since becoming a Mama I have accepted so many changes. I have sacrificed for the greater good and given up so much already. I am still not quite sure if I am ready to accept this change but regardless it is happening. I am not sleeping and as a result I am not living. I am suffering, my relationship with my baby is suffering. At some point I know I have to just give into this and when I do maybe I really will “begin to live again. But [I] can not do so until [I] have given grief the time”. Any excuse to wallow a little longer……

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi x

(For the record since writing this diary entry I have started to move a little closer to the Acceptance stage and definitely well away from the Anger stage but I keep finding myself back in the murky waters of Denial – and occasionally depression. I am convinced though that one day, some day, Baby M will sleep or I will accept. Watch this space to see who cracks first…)

“Sixth Sense”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

A Monday Mini Moan:

I have a theory that, when the placenta leaves your body at birth it leaves behind a special sleep tracking device so your baby always knows the exact moment, no matter what time it is, when you finally get into your nice, warm bed and close your eyes…haha Mama, no chance!

Do you have a sleep stalker too. Head over to the Facebook page or comment below to tell us about your baby’s sixth sense…

“Prison Break”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

(Original diary excerpt from 15th October 2015)

My current Netflix obsession is “Orange Is the New Black”. Probably because, after 5 days stuck at home with an ill 4 year old and a ‘refusing to feed’ 5 month old, I am currently living in my own kind of prison and misery loves company.

I understand that feeling of being watched when you take a shower, of sleeping with one eye open, hearing screams in the night, constantly being ordered about, living a life of routine, eating tasteless goo (well tasting it to make sure it’s not too hot for the baby!), not being able to wear make-up and looking like shit. Atleast the inmates at Litchfield get to have sex and eat with 2 hands (ok I should probably reword that sentence in light of it being an all female prison but I’m too tired to press backspace!). They even have an onsite hairdresser – I can barely muster the energy to brush mine!

And so another looong night in the prison of sleep thieves begins! Having just finished my duty of feeding the baby (probably a feed he doesn’t need but if it gets him to sleep quicker I don’t care anymore!) and while he falls asleep to a light show and the tunes of some repetitive nursery rhyme that for whatever reason keeps him calm, I sit typing away and listening to hubby trying to soothe our boy back to sleep. The tummy ache (or ‘tummy egg’ as LJ calls it and the reason I have been stuck inside all week) has reared its ugly head again and we no longer know if it’s a real ache or because the smarty pants has twigged it gets him attention. As a doting mother I should probably go in there but the competitive side of me thinks ‘Haha I already got my one back to sleep!’ Of course this is not the best attitude to adopt. After all this is just a blip in LJ’s sleeping since he’s ill and pretty soon we’ll be back to my boy being the only one waking up – better to play the tag team thing. I should go in. Then again, it has gone awfully quiet. Maybe I’ll just try and get a bit of sleep in myself. After all, a prisoner of these blonde, blue eyed-boys (the kind that steal your breath and make your heart feel like it’s going to explode whilst also driving you to the brink of exhaustion and insanity) needs to be alert in order to survive this life sentence.

Lights out Ladies! The Warden makes the rules, not me!

 

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi xxx

“Remember Me”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

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I love my boys more than anything but there are some days where I get soccer punched by that feeling of never dancing again. That moment where I remember that I used to get paid to do what I love AND see the world! I used to wake up in a different city or country everyday. Now I wake up in a different bed or with a different child lying with his foot in my face or stealing my covers. I actually got pushed out of bed onto the floor once-by a 2 year old!! How is that even possible?!

I used to shimmy around on stage in sparkly costumes and huge feathers. My photo must be in people’s holiday albums all over the world! I used to be tanned. I used to be toned!

When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror now I see a version of myself I no longer recognize: The greying hair with the funny post-baby bald patches, the t-shirt that’s covered in vomit stains and something else I’d rather pretend isn’t there, the black circles under my eyes from lack of sleep (granted I didn’t sleep much in my former life either but for VERY different reasons!), the extra stress lines because you never stop worrying about your babies from the moment they are placed in your arms.

I’m lucky in some ways. I’m probably back to the same weight I was then. I may even be smaller. I mean I’ve had no time to eat since Baby M was born and God only knows how many calories I have burned off in the endless trips to and from bedrooms, picking up and putting down my gorgeously chubby baby and never-ending walks up and down the hallway trying to get the baby to sleep. And I’m breastfeeding so I can’t fill up on alcohol every night (plus a fiver doesn’t go as far as it did in the crew bar!)

And no-one warns you about the breastfeeding cramps-it’s like doing 200 sit ups every time you feed in those early days!

So maybe I could still pull off that sequined bikini?! Hmmm.

There are days I really do think about going back. Running away to the dock and jumping onboard the next ship that would take me….(seriously so tired but clearly so addicted to my phone I was able to write that last sentence having nodded off).

However, I am no longer flexible in any way and lugging a 9 kilo baby around all day takes its toll on a back that wasn’t all that stable to begin with. I probably could still plaster on that make-up and brush off my showbiz smile but actually I kinda prefer my Mama smile these days. The one I reserve just for my babies, the ones that see me as a star without the make-up or the costumes.

Part of me will always miss that life and will always yearn to go back but it’s time to look at what I’ve got instead of what I’ve lost.

So next time I look in the mirror I’ll look past the wrinkles and focus on the laughter lines instead. Some I got from my memories onboard but the biggest ones, the best ones, I got since becoming a Mama.

 

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi xxx

Hello Blog World!

Mama Atzi / / No Comments
Hello Blog World!

So here it is, the first post on my Diary of an Exhausted Mama blog and as will no doubt be a typical situation I currently feel so sleep deprived I barely remember how to type let alone have the imagination to write anything interesting!

So for now I would just like to say a big hello and welcome, and thank you for even taking a glance in my direction. This blog started out as a genuine modern-day diary (in iPhone notes in the middle of the night while breastfeeding my then 4 month old baby!) and after sharing a couple of extracts with a good friend I decided to bite the bullet and put them out into the big wide web world.

I have no intention of my words being taken seriously or intended in anyway as professional advice; it is simply the ramblings of an exhausted Mama expressing herself in one of the best ways she knows (the other being to dance but I’m not ready to be a youtube blogger just yet!) and hoping that it may help others who, like me, sometimes need to know they are not alone.

I look forward to sharing stories and adventures with my fellow Exhausted Mama Club members! And of course Papas, Nanas, Grandads and everyone else are all welcome too.

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi xxx

p.s. Don’t forget to join the Exhausted Mama Club on Facebook!