Saved by the Baby

I hit my lowest point last wed. After almost six weeks of sleep deprivation and intermittent pain from the c-section, I was exhausted. Adding hormonal roller coaster to that, I felt really overwhelmed last Wed.

I know "baby blues" are normal and in fact, I cry about 3-4 times a week when I have surge and start feeling overwhelmed or trapped. most of the time, it goes away in 20-30 min and I am fine again. Last wed however, my baby blues were quick significant and I started getting a headache all day and felt soooooo tired.

You would think this means I just collapsed and slept a lot. Actually just the opposite. I couldn't sleep even when Isabel was napping or taken care by Jaime's parents. The pressure from my head, the pressure to sleep according to Isabel's schedule, and the pressure of constantly having to breastfeed her all led me to have insomnia. I was so tired I couldn't tell if I was hungry or tired any more. I don't know if you ever experience that - the forever "in between" feeling.

Well, by night time, Isabel was sleep at 10, I was still wide awake exhausted and couldn't sleep until 1:30 and that was with a lot of soothing from Jaime (thank God for him). Luckily I was saved by my baby because Isabel slept until 4:30 that night, so i still got 3 hours of sleep. After feeding her, she went back to sleep for another 3 hours, so I got almost 6 hours of rest all together.

I feel extremely fortunately that our baby is so good to us. Her sleep pattern is improving so much. She is now not even 7 weeks and she slept 8 hours last night and the one before. So despite my minor meltdown, I recovered quickly as she allowed me to sleep 6 hour that night. It will only get better from here, I hope...

-Lei