Today I was that person who falls asleep in public

Today I was that person who falls asleep in public. In the most undignified way. Head flopping about everywhere, mouth open and possibly drooling. To make matters worse I was sitting in the gallery at the swimming pool as I was supposed to be watching my eldest daughter swim. I have no clue what she did in that lesson. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Also (yes it gets worse) I was holding my baby daughter at the time who was fast asleep too. My middle daughter sat beside me eating crisps and when she had finished those she decided to wet a tissue with cold water and wipe my face with it. At which point my eyes snapped open and I insisted "I'm awake, I'm awake!". After ten seconds I fell asleep again and she again wiped my face (this time not so gently!) with the wet tissues. This went on for around half an hour. If someone had been secretly filming me that video would have gone viral already!

My baby is now 7 weeks old. So I've had barely any sleep for 7 weeks. As lovely as it is to have a newborn, the sleep deprivation is tough. Hence me falling asleep when I sit still for more than two minutes! In my experience by the time baby is three months they either start sleeping for longer or you just get used to not sleeping. Meanwhile here are some tips which have helped me and might be useful to other new mums:

Sleep when baby sleeps

This is a good idea in the very early days when you are recovering from the birth. Bear in mind your body has gone through trauma and if this level of trauma happened to a mans body he'd be on one month bedrest. Yet women have to stay awake all night and day looking after a tiny but very needy human. Rest when you can. This is easier if this is your first baby or if you can get family or friends to help with other children and the household chores.

Forget about Naps

Yes I know this is a contradiction of point one but this is what I had to do when my mum had to go back home and my husband went back to work after paternity leave. Every day was consumed by me fantasising about a nap and then feeling bad about not having one, as my daughter does not sleep for long in the daytime. Now I've forgotten the whole concept of napping in the day and actually feel less tired.

Get an early night

So daytime naps are a thing of the past but all three kids tend to go to sleep by 8.30pm and as much as I'd like to spend quality time with hubby/watch box sets on Netflix I quickly tidy the house and go to bed by around 9pm. That way I've had a couple of hours sleep when the little one wakes up for a feed at around 11.30.

Let your partner help

If you have a partner then they could do one of the night feeds of expressed breast milk or formula milk. Since my husband works full time I felt bad about him doing this in the week. But on the weekends he did the late night or early morning feed so that I could get a little extra sleep.

Look after yourself

In the very early days after my baby's birth I totally went off food. The healthy diet that I ate during pregnancy went out of the window and only carbs and sugar would do. Thankfully I'm over that phase now but only because it played havoc with my stomach. Now that I'm eating well again I feel a lot better, still tired but not like a total zombie. It's worth eating right, regular balanced meals and also take new mum or breastfeeding vitamins. It makes a a difference.

This too shall pass

Like I said, after three months babies usually fall into some sort of routine. So even though you will never get as much sleep as you want because now you have kids, at least those hazy sleep deprived days when you felt like the walking dead will be in the past. The newborn phase is a lovely phase, your babies needs are fairly simple, it's lovely to cuddle a newborn or have them sleeping on your chest. Trust me when your kids get to the stage when they can backchat you will look back fondly on the days when all you had to deal with was tiredness!

There will still be days when you randomly fall asleep like I did, but hopefully you found my tips helpful and are able to function at at least 50%.

MummyIP x