Sleep Expectations vs. Sleep Reality
Time does not behave when you have an infant.
It stops flowing systematically. It starts jumping around, going from lightning fast, to achingly slow. The moment when it seems to be trickiest is when your baby is sleeping.
The expectation for what you can get done with your baby asleep are so lofty. You have memories of how an hour used to be a unit of time that had a high yield of productivity. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to think you could say, do a couple of things for yourself when your baby takes a nap, right? You may even day dream about all the things you could do with a glorious 20 minutes - 2 hours of "free time" without your baby gurgling in a way that forces you to hold them ALL THE TIME.
Maybe you dream that you might do a few of the following without the least bit of guilt:
eat
go to the bathroom
take a shower
put on clean clothes
brush your teeth
make a shopping list
catchup on text messages
catch up on emails
a bit of stretching or yoga
clear off a counter or do the dishes
move the laundry along in the cycle
and just maybe, snag a nap yourself
What typically happens is very different. Because when you're holding your awake baby, you are motivated to do all those other things! You have a vision, and a bit of clarity and the desire to feel the accomplishment any of those items would give you!
But the reality is that you set your baby down to sleep, and then you keep looking at her.
You wonder if she is breathing.
You look at her and can’t believe how adorable she is.
You worry she is too hot or too cold, and maybe you fuss with her swaddle for a bit.
You take a breath and remember to walk away, and then stare in the refrigerator and find NOTHING that looks good to you to eat.
So maybe you scroll through Grubhub for a bit, but don't really know what you want, so shut that down.
You grab some chips, and warm up your coffee in the microwave, and go back to look at your baby again.
And then, real quick, remember you needed to pee.
You go super fast - forcing the urine out of you like a firehose because you think you hear your baby cry.
Then remember you didn't fill up the peri bottle before you sat down, so you waddle to the sink with your pants around your feet, get what you need to heal your still sore bottom, sit back down to rinse your undercarriage, and finish it off with a blissful wipe of witch hazel and a new pad.
You hurry out, only to see that no, your baby is not awake, and instead, worry you've got a weird version of "secretary's ear" but for crying.
You plop on the couch, start scrolling through your apps, and then, damnit, your baby is awake for real, and you've spent 25 minutes staring at your phone, not consuming chips or coffee, and other than peeing didn’t DO much, and now you are starting this horse and pony show all over again.