The Awakening

Ha!
That title amuses me on so many levels. Where on earth do I begin? This has been an awakening alright - I knew it would be hard, but how could I possibly have known just how hard? Sleep has become a commodity more precious than cheap gas. I never thought that 45 minutes would feel like a full night's sleep until this one came. It is especially challenging being a nursing mother as all the feedings, including middle of the night ones, fall to you. It is a commitment on so many levels to breastfeed a baby, I don't think I really understood. I think I may have had some foolish notion that babies had some sort of rhyme or reason, that they fed on a relatively reasonable if half-heartedly predictable fashion, but it is yet another crazy notion of which I have been absolved by my little dictator. Nahanni has a crimson temper and for her there is only perfectly placid and raging mad - no in-between. I try to keep on top of her and when that works it is a breezy wonderful thing, but then she changes, or there's a growth spurt (again?) or I get a milk blister (like I haven't already had enough problems??) and then we seem to be starting from scratch. These last couple nights have been the most difficult since the fever melt-down when I had mastitis. It is so difficult to run on such little sleep and last night, in the hopes of getting ahead of the game I nursed her for nearly 2 hours before bedtime, hoping she would sleep after a dreadfully restless night previous. But no, Miss Nahanni had her own plans and despite not sleeping until nearly 1 am she was back up at 2 am and I turned into a rotten parent. I actually told my 3 week old baby to shut-up. Horror!! I felt awful immediately after, but I was so tired and I literally couldn't believe she was awake again - but there I was facing already one of those fears I had before she came - that somedays it would just be work, and I guess last night was one of the work days. To her credit she settled down after and stayed pretty settled until 6 am and she is mercifully asleep in the sling right now so that I can do this, but my-o-my, I am learning to respect mothers the world over in a completely new way. It is really challenging to find a balance in this new life we are leading. Trying to figure out how to keep the house from crumbling, to feed yourself, to maybe leave the house once a day or even take a shower for that matter. And the worst part is that I am trying to relish every day that she is this tiny, gorgeous vulnerable creature while at the same time anxiously awaiting a time when it will start to get easier. It is this state of cognitive dissonance in which I find myself that I feel is the crux of having a newborn - especially for me as I feel that the first two weeks are a sort of blur that I can scarcely remember. In so many ways I feel like I missed that time altogether, even though of course, every day I marvelled at this darling creature that I had grown inside of me. I marvelled at her tiny fingers and toes, her tiny bum, like little pink moons. I did gaze into her eyes, I did smell her hair and stroke her little cheek - it just went by in such a blur of illness and fatigue that I feel like I need to see the movie to remember the plot. I suppose that is the biggest lesson I am trying to remember every time that it gets hard - this too shall pass, and faster than you can bear.