Sleep: a sweet gift

Yes, I will post more pictures, yes, they are coming soon, possibly later today. But I wanted to share a few things, and the laptop (which has no pictures on it) was right here, and both girls are occupied (Anjali has the TV going, Nadira is drunk from breastmilk) and I've got a few minutes to share.

The past three days have been rough, literally no sleep. Nadira has timed every nap for times when I can't sleep. Yesterday I had to drop Fai off at the train station, and as I drove home in the wet, cold rain I missed three turns. I took Nadira to her one month check up, and when the nurse asked me for her date of birth, I had to think a minute about what year she was born. Yeah. Major zombie. Last night was the breaking point. Anjali was in bed at 7, Fai went to sleep at 9, and there I was with my beautiful, screaming, cranky, not sleeping baby. She dozed off, and I slipped into the bathroom with a mission: to take a bath before the baby started to cry again. This was a much-needed bath, I smelled like spit up and sour breast milk. There was even spit up in my hair. So I washed it, then put in the conditioner and leaned back in the hot hot tub water to relax a minute. I felt myself starting to fall asleep in the bath. But then it started: Nadira was awake, and not happy. I rinsed my hair as fast as I could, ran the towel over my body quickly before wrapping my dripping hair up in it, and started scrambling into my pajama bottoms. This was when Fai woke up. Half asleep himself, he threw this gem out:

"Where are you? Why aren't you feeding her? Why'd you leave her?"

Now, in the light of day, I can appreciate that he'd just been woken up by a screaming baby, in the dark, with me no where to be found, but at that moment, as I ran half-dressed and still dripping out of the bathroom to get the screaming infant so that he could go back to sleep in the nice, soft, warm bed, I lost it. What followed was perhaps the dumbest fight of our marriage, which ended in me screeching at him "You're breastfeeding the next one!" and then errupting in sobs. When Fai started snoring again, I started crying even more from pure jealousy. I'm sure anyone who's gone three days without sleep can relate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually enjoying breastfeeding this time, very conveniant, smells better than formula, it's free, it stores better, and I love the cuddling with Nadira. It's going great, none of the problems I had trying to breastfeed Anjali. It's the not sleeping thing that's getting to me.

And this is when I got my gift. I laid down a sleeping Nadira, brushed my teeth, finished dressing, and curled up in bed with no expectations of actually getting to sleep...

Seven Hours Later.....

Yep, that's right, seven hours. I woke up with a start, and checked to make sure Nadira was still breathing. When I was sure she was fine, I stretched out and enjoyed a few more minutes before she woke up ready to eat.

I doubt this means anything, I doubt my never-sleeping baby is now magically going to sleep through the night every night, but rather I feel this was a gift. At my lowest, my breaking point, my yell-at-my-husband-for-no-reason point, God handed me a gift, a sleeping baby. Or maybe Nadira just knew I couldn't keep functioning without a rest. Either way, I'll take it. Seven hours never felt so good.

Obviously, other things of interest have been happening, but I'll share some of those later when I post the pictures.