I agree with absolutely everything you’ve written, Michelle!
Something that I wish I had internalized a bit more was the negative impact of baby induced sleep deprivation. Everybody tells you that you’ll miss sleep after you have a baby, but I still think I was unprepared for what that meant. It’s really hard to describe the psychological torture of not getting to sleep for more than 3 hours in a row for months on end. We did sleeping shifts too, but because of breastfeeding and supersonic mommy hearing, I feel like I still woke up every 2-3 hours when Lizzie cried. There’s a video recording of me talking about current events a couple of months after Lizzie was born, and I HAVE NO MEMORY OF PARTICIPATING IN THIS EXPERIENCE. Watching my zonked out zombie self on camera really drove home how much the sleep deprivation changed me.
I agree with absolutely everything you’ve written, Michelle!
Something that I wish I had internalized a bit more was the negative impact of baby induced sleep deprivation. Everybody tells you that you’ll miss sleep after you have a baby, but I still think I was unprepared for what that meant. It’s really hard to describe the psychological torture of not getting to sleep for more than 3 hours in a row for months on end. We did sleeping shifts too, but because of breastfeeding and supersonic mommy hearing, I feel like I still woke up every 2-3 hours when Lizzie cried. There’s a video recording of me talking about current events a couple of months after Lizzie was born, and I HAVE NO MEMORY OF PARTICIPATING IN THIS EXPERIENCE. Watching my zonked out zombie self on camera really drove home how much the sleep deprivation changed me.
This essay sums it up pretty well: https://www.scarymommy.com/100-days-darkness-new-baby/