kim through
   the looking glass

It’s nearly impossible to be a kind, patient, loving parent with a solid month of sleep deprivation behind you.

For the past week now, Gwen has been sleeping much better - going to bed between 8 & 9pm, sleeping solid until around 12:30 - 1am, then coming into bed with us and falling right back asleep, nursing around 4, and sometimes again around 6, and waking up for the day between 7 & 8am. I know it won’t last forever and that we’ll be back in the throes of sleep deprivation at the next developmental milestone or tooth, and that we will then likely trudge through another month of sleep disturbance, but after this last week, where our sleep was only minimally disturbed, I feel like a different person.

I feel like a better person. A better mom, a better wife.

I was in the depths last week. I was honestly considering going to the doctor and asking for some anti-depressants - or at least a thorough postpartum depression evaluation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so low in my life. When my mom came to visit I asked her, “Do you think I have postpartum depression? Or do I just have a really hard baby?” She believed it was option #2. That’s hard to say out loud. I love my daughter - she’s truly a delight to be around and has the most beautiful smile and such a fun personality.

But when it’s been over a month since you’ve had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep, you think things that make you feel like you shouldn’t be a parent. That you should never have been a parent. That you’re the worst mother in the world.

But when that month is over … when you get a couple of nights of decent sleep and when your daughter starts smiling again and, for the first time in her life, really starts giggling at things you do … you understand that you aren’t a horrible person or a horrible mother.

You understand that really, it’s been the sleep deprivation talking and, well, let’s be honest - it is a form of torture.

And you know what’s really cute? Gwen’s actually been snuggling with Brad at night lately. I’ll wake up and she’ll be over beside him … after months of co-sleeping with her wedged directly beside me, it’s kinda nice to be able to turn over and see her over there. She’s also developed a cute habit of sticking her head by him and her feet by me and laying like the mid part of a capital ‘H’. I’d read about those kinds of co-sleeping kids, but I believed I had a die-hard heat-seeking missile. Apparently I was wrong!