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Sounds like a plan. By the wonderful Grace Farris.
P.S. Books I could write, and major life changes.
How to Sleep When Your Baby Sleeps
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If we could only clean up after our kiddo and sleep at the same time! Exhaustion is no joke.
My husband and I still take naps most weekends when our 18 month old is napping, or if one of us is home with him while he’s sick, on vacation etc. We find it a way to feel rejuvenated for all the awake time, and during my maternity leave I found that I could do all the laundry/dishwashing/etc. while the baby was awake but I definitely couldn’t sleep while the baby was awake. I took showers with the baby in the bouncy seat in the bathroom, wrote thank you notes with the baby in the pack and play etc. I’m glad to see so many others feel seen or heard by this comic, but I truly think that many people (myself included, in the early months) underestimate how much you can do while the newborn is awake! No one is saying to nap EVERY SINGLE TIME the baby sleeps, but in general, naps are awesome, and we should all take more of them :)
95% unrelated, but will you be doing your Motherhood Around the World series again this summer?
hi! we are just deciding on that — and if we want to approach it in a new way. please stay tuned, and tahnk you so much for asking! xoxo
Nice set of tips Joanna! I’ve been following your blog for quite some while and this is the first time I commented. I really love the way you share your experiences. I’m also a mother and I can understand how difficult it is to manage your day when have kids, tough job though. I wish you all the best and happy life ahead. keep sharing!
8 days postpartum and this made me actually LOL – thanks, I needed to read this! Seems like society’s message to new moms is something like “wake up your baby to feed every 2 hours never wake a sleeping baby breast feed on a schedule on demand never co-sleep keep your baby physically attached to you make sure they self soothe don’t let them use a pacifier or suck their hands. Oh, and don’t forget about your self care.”
YES!!! It’s so hard to filter all the mixed messages!!
When my second daughter was born, I was so tired that one day I realized that it was Saturday morning and I had my last shower on Tuesday.
I’ve had five children and with the first four I felt this way. Like yeah right lady, how about you come over and fold all of the socks! Then magically when I had my fifth I found that if I didn’t sleep when the baby slept, I just wouldn’t sleep. So the laundry suffered, the house was a mess, but I was sane! Life went on and somehow everyone mostly smelled of fresh laundry. I think this advice comes from a very good place, honestly. If there are ten things on your to-do list when baby comes, eight of them should be feed the baby and the other two should be take a couple naps. I have a six month old so I’m still in the thick of it.
I always fall asleep when I dry my hair!!
My baby only slept when I was driving him around in the car or pushing him in the stroller. So I slept…never. He’s now 7 — we survived and he’s the best! — but the “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice still makes me bitter AF.
Same! My daughter 2.5 years now and she still doesn’t sleep. She has slept “through the night” less than 10 times in her life and only naps in the car while the car is moving. There is still very little sleep happening at my house. My closest mom friend has a daughter the same age who taked 3 to 4 hour naps everyday(!) And has slept 8 to 8 since she was 6 weeks old. It is the one big disconnect we have. Sometimes I imagine what my life would be like if I had a sleeper. We probably would have tried to have a second child by now (through adoption/surrogacy bc of some issues I had with pregnancy). Now we are pretty sure she will be an only. Mostly because of the sleep deprivation we are still in the thick of. But I love her deep down to my bones. And I would so it all over again for her. But what if the second baby is the same and I don’t love them as much? Because how could I ever love something else this much? It’s all very confusing.
Thank you for this!!!
I was one of those moms that actually slept when the baby slept :-). In my country we get fully paid pregnancy leave (and you can take it from day one or you can work throughout the whole pregnancy, it’s up to you) and then we get 1 year fully paid maternity leave after the baby is born, so I really had time to immerse myself in motherhood with both of my kids. With my first, I slept when he slept but not every time, but with my second I literally religiously slept when she slept during the day. She was on a schedule and slept twice a day and always at the same time so the moment she would fall asleep I would drop everything and jump straight into bed. I enjoyed those sleeps so, so much and would be so relaxed once my older would get back from the kindergarten. Once I got back to work, it took me a month to get over those sleeps as I would literally fall asleep while my colleagues were mid sentence :-)
I also slept when my baby slept. I was given this advice from friends and my mother and I wasn’t offended because it actually worked. The stuff that “needed” to get done had to wait until I was rested enough to do it.
My sis always gives a birthday card that has a picture of a woman on the front pouring coffee into her mouth. The inside says, “Sleep when you’re dead.” Maybe that’s what I’ll tell the next person who tells me this “helpful advice”! If I am fortunate enough to have another child! As for me, I chose to do laundry and take a hotter-than-heck bath instead. So. Much. Laundry. And hemorrhoids.
best one yet!
This is SO FUCKING TRUE AND HILARIOUS, I‘m screaming! I love her for it! Exactly like some others said before, this stupid advice is so enraging because it makes you feel like you‘re failing for not managing to do this thing which sounds like the easiest thing in the world! But yes, it‘s so hard to squeeze in a nap exactly at the time your baby is sleeping while you got a) shit to do, like, organize your life, b) no idea for how long baby will sleep c) or a baby who only sleeps in your arms and you‘re afraid you‘ll let it drop if you fall asleep yourself or she‘ll suffocate in your arms, etc etc. And no matter how exhausted I was, I could not switch to sleep mode at 10 am after just having done some dishes and taken the older one to daycare… I‘m so glad these days are over!
Oh my god, this hits home!!
I don’t think I can recall I single piece of useful advice anyone gave me when I had babies, but I do remember a lot of little unexpected kindnesses. Once I was in a parking lot trying to keep my lawless 2 year old from running into traffic while not suffocating the screaming 2 week old I was carrying, holding the grocery cart with my foot so it would’t roll away while loading bags into the car, when a 20-something guy asked if he could take my cart. He seemed so young and businesslike that I assumed he was headed into the store, but I watched him return the cart to the stand, walk back to his car and drive off. It still makes me cry a little to think about it…even now that I consistently sleep more than 4 hours at a time.
Anyway, I say kindness beats advice any day!
“Kindness beats advice any day!” I will embroider this on a pillow and throw it at the people offering unsolicited advice. It won’t hurt them but they will hopefully shut up already!
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