Andrea Nalls

Having a new baby is incredibly hard. And beautiful and fulfilling and rewarding, but I DETESTED those newborn days and nights.

Especially those nights.

Watching the last rays of sunlight disappear would make my heart race. My three week old baby didn’t sleep for more than an hour and half and had zero regard for what time it was.

So tiny and helpless– I knew it was my responsibility to keep her safe and fed and healthy—and for me, that was easier during the day. Here’s why:

1) It felt unfair knowing my husband and toddler were fast asleep a few rooms over. The minute our newborn would wake, I would spring to action. Bottle, breast, pacing the floor, bouncing on an exercise ball, loud shushing into her tiny ear, whatever it would take to keep her quiet, so she wouldn’t wake the rest of the house.

2) The isolation. It’s hardly appropriate to call your mom/friend/sister at 1 a.m. when your baby starts spitting up a curdled milk mixture so hard it comes out of her nose. And even if it were appropriate it wouldn’t matter, they wouldn’t answer, because duh– they’d be sleeping.

3) The dread of knowing you will get a collective 2 ½ hours of sleep, but your toddler will wake up at 5:30 a.m., ready for his morning dance party.

4) An incapacitating, all-consuming fear that something would happen to my sweet baby girl while she was laying peacefully in her safe, tightfitting-sheet-on-a-firm-mattress crib, in her painstakingly baby-proofed nursery. SIDS. The sudden infant death syndrome that seemingly strikes at random. How is any new mom supposed to sleep soundly with such an intense and inexplicable fear? (This is rhetorical AF, obvi.)

I would stare for hours into our pitch black backyard, half of me thankful my baby was healthy, the other half of me terrified something would happen to her.

5) The guilt from reacting with full-on exasperation and annoyance because when I would think “this is it, after she falls asleep this time, I will finally get some rest” she would fuss and require soothing after sleeping for only a few minutes. Me snapping “Seriously? All you do is eat!” at my tiny baby was a knee-jerk reaction, but would trigger intense guilt over such uncontrolled emotional response.

“It gets better” and “Sleep when the baby sleeps” are two sentiments I hope never to hear again in my life because does it get better? Well, yes it does. Children don’t usually turn into adults who only sleep for 90 minutes at a time. Sleeping when the baby sleeps sounds good in theory but it’s impractical. And neither statement helps in that 3 a.m. moment when the channels switch to “Paid Programming”.

I went to extreme measures to quell my anxiety. I sent my husband to Walmart in the middle of a tropical depression to buy a rock-n-play. And then I sent him back when he returned with the version that didn’t vibrate. I put a $300 Owlet on a credit card. I used Amazon one-day shipping to emergently obtain a copy of Dr. Harvey Karp’s “Happiest Baby on the Block”.

But I found there’s no magic solution to aid in this season of parenting. It helps to find a community of women going through the same struggles. Prioritizing self-care and spending time connecting with your significant other are also healthy ways of dealing, but I’m going to level with you, for the first 3 months of my baby’s life, I didn’t have time to seek out a support group, wash AND condition my hair or converse about one meaningful thing with my spouse.

It’s survival mode and the only thing that helped me was the time passing and binge watching Downton Abbey.

And walks around the block. And coffee, though only slightly.

If you loved the newborn stage and came through it with fond memories– I applaud you.

If you gave it all you had and emerged on the other side with a baby who (mainly) sleeps through the night and is somewhat happy, most of the time—you deserve a standing ovation.

You managed to prevail in a time that required intense mental and physical stamina, and holy crap– you nailed it. Great job momma.