“Breaking Bad”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

No need for the DEA, or atleast not unless they have a Wine Enforcement Unit, but someone might want to call the Mama Police because for the last week or so I have let Little M sleep in my arms at nap time! Gasp, shock, quick get that rod out for her back….

IMG_3797Possibly not the best idea I know but he’s gone from having half an hour only naps to sleeping up to 2 hours at a time which means I have actually been able to get some rest too. Something I have really needed recently!

And I have been able to put him down next to me on the sofa or bed (heavily barricaded by cushions of course) to go for a coffee or get some work done. Still I know this can’t go on forever. Can it?! And slowly I had better wean him back into his cot. Maybe just a few more episodes of ‘Suits’ first….

It has got me thinking about how he sleeps though. I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t like his cot it’s just that he still hasn’t learnt to self-soothe so by sleeping next to me I am there when he stirs and can respond quick enough for him to stay asleep. That means 2 things need to happen if I want him to stay in his cot for a longer sleep and most importantly if I want him to “sleep through the night” (an exhausted Mama’s favourite words!!), either

1) I need to get to him when he stirs quicker than I am (well that’s not gonna happen. I am a walking zombie in the night, I waddle like a marshmallow on Xanax) or

2) I need to ‘train’ him to ‘self-soothe’ but since both those terms give me the chills we may be back to square one here. Answers on a postcard please….

Whatever the case I once again feel like a bad Mother. It happens a lot.

Every time I give my baby a bottle the paediatrician says he doesn’t need, I feel like a bad Mother.

Every time my baby wakes up through the night when I know my friends’ babies sleep, I feel like a bad Mother.

Every time I see someone breastfeed their baby when I no longer can, I feel like a bad Mother.

Every time I put my baby down and he cries, I feel like a bad Mother.

Every time I see a new bruise on my son’s leg, I feel like a bad Mother.

But every time I walk into Kindergarten and hear my son shout ‘Mama!’ as he runs towards me, I feel like an amazing Mother.

And every time Little M reaches out his arms for me just because he wants to give me a cuddle I feel like I am doing something right.

And that is the wonderful thing about Motherhood because in a world where you can do 100 things right and only focus and stress over the 1 thing you got wrong when it comes to being a Mama every bad, difficult, stressful thing is wiped out with that 1 uplifting moment. That’s why a baby can keep you up all night and make you feel like you want to shoot yourself yet all they have to do is smile at you in a way that makes you feel like a superhero and all is forgiven.

I guess it all starts at birth. I mean, serial killers are locked up for life for causing less pain but yet we forgive these tiny strangers (supposedly forget – I’m still working on it!) the second they are placed in our arms. I don’t think anyone can understand that rush of love you feel until it happens to you but suddenly your life is not your own. There is something more important than anything else in the world and immediately you become their protectors. You would die for them. And yet you have just met. That is unconditional love at first sight. And our children are the only ones we feel that for.

Sometimes we will doubt ourselves and whether we are able to do this. Sometimes we will be judged for the things we do or don’t do (like letting baby sleep in our arms ;0) but always remember that no-one else can do what you do.

Only you can make the decision as to whether your baby needs that feed, only you can make your child feel safe when they wake up in the night, only you can provide your baby with what they need, only you can truly comfort your baby and when they are in pain or sad, or just proud of their new ‘war wound’, a child will always reach out for their Mama.

So call the Mama police if you must but I’m pretty sure our babies won’t press charges because when all is said and done only you can make your baby smile like that or cause your son to shout your name as he runs into your arms. You are their world as much as they are yours.

So whenever you feel like a bad Mother tell your children you love them. I bet you get the response you’re looking for. Whether it be a look, a smile or the most wonderful words in the world: I love you too Mama.

No judge or jury can ever take that away from you.

(And if not you can always crack open the wine!)

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi x

“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…)