I used to require about 10 hours of sleep every night. Now, I am lucky if I get 5-6 hours, and even still, motherhood has turned me into even more of a worry wart than I used to be. I am up and down all night.
If Evelyn starts crying while i'm asleep it sends this electric jolt through my body and I spring up so quickly, like Miss Clavel ("Something is not right.")
Even if she doesn't make a sound I still get up worried that something may be wrong. Maybe she is cold. Maybe she is hot. Maybe she has SIDS. Maybe she wiggled the the corner of her crib and sufficated herself on the bumper pad. Maybe we left the door unlocked and somebody snuck in and kidnapped her to sell her to an underground baby modeling concentration camp because she's so beautiful. etc.
I worry.
Being a mother has made me an extremely paranoid person. I know it bothers Justin.
All through my pregnancy I was worried that someone was going to come into our apartment at night and murder us for ANYgiven reason, but mostly to cut open my stomach and steal my baby, because I saw some MSNBC special about that once.
Instead of just rolling with it and making me feel better, when I asked Justin every single night if he was sure that both doors were locked and the windows were closed, he would get all mad and tell me I wasn't allowed to watch Law and Order SVU or Criminal Minds anymore.
So I don't really watch those shows now, even though they are some my favorites.
It really does help. I worry much less about being raped, killed, tortured, and now I focus all of my worry on whether my baby is breathing or not.
Also, after Evelyn was born I developed this weird anxiety cough. I get this tickle in my throat during stressful or socially unsure moments.
It mostly flared up if I was taking her out in public to a store or something.
I thought it was bad how every single stranger in the world wanted to ask the same 5 questions to me when I was pregnant. Believe me, you draw A LOT of public attention when you're carrying a watermelon under your shirt..
BUT MAN do people LOVE babies, and MAN, I do not like talking to people that I don't know.
I get anxiety about it. Thirty seconds after walking into Target and 5 people have already said "aww", "oh my god, how old is she?", "honey, would you look at that!"
My coughing starts
...and I can't stop
...and I only draw more attention to ourselves. I start worrying people are thinking "Poor thing, her mother is so sick, coughing all over that tiny little baby." and it makes me cough even more,
I
am
pathetic.
I just want a good nights sleep with out anyone dying in my mind.
Is that too much to ask?
i wish i could just like, insert David's name where Justin's name is. I literally can say that I completely and totally and whole-heartedly feel ya on all of this. I worry like that, and have weird panic attacks that I can't explain and constantly think Indy might be suffocating in his crib. One time, when Indy was just learning how to stand, I hadn't lowered his crib yet, and he fell out. onto the floor. talk about feeling like a crappy mother :( so now i worry all the time that he'll fall out again and die. Anyways, you're not alone...
ReplyDeleteI feel like I haven't slept at all since my little one was born. And I like to sleep. And I think I have become partly psychotic because I never get into a deep sleep. I am afraid to fall into a deep sleep for fear that I might miss a whimper. I, too, jump out of bed when I hear him grunting or starting to cry. Some say I should let him cry a little bit at night, but I feel like he needs me or needs something, so I act rather quickly when I hear him making noise. And it's true, too, that if I haven't heard him for a while, I have to go in and do a breathing check or just to see if he's still there.
ReplyDeleteI think I must've seen that same show about the baby being cut out of the mother. It was rather creepy. When I was pregnant, I had this weird fear that I was going to get hit by a car (I had to cross a really busy intersection to get to my job site everyday) and my baby was going to pop out of my belly. Really, really gross! People thought I was crazy when I told them that I really worried about it.
I just think pregnancy and mommyhood makes you absolutely crazy! I know I've been completely ridiculous since I found out I was pregnant and my little guy! I guess it's just instinct to be super-duper sensitive to protect the little ones!