Sleep Less

Four months of being a mother and I am wondering how much I have changed personally! There have been lots of changes but the most important one for me was waking up in the middle of the nights, early mornings, late mornings,..! I know it will sound so simple, a mother getting up at the wee hours of the night to feed her child, but it is not so! You don’t know me! I love to sleep! I mean I really love to sleep! Actually I love to sleep in the mornings so much that I actually sleep in the mornings! I just don’t get up!

When I was in school, I slept late, missed my auto rickshaw and slept back again until noon! During exams I studied all night, slept at 2 am, set the alarm at 6 am and got up at 8.30 am and rushed to the exam hall! During my undergrad, as luck would have it, I got into afternoon shift and college started at 1 pm! During post grad, struggled out of the bed at 9.15 am, got ready in 15 mins and rushed to college sometimes begging my dad to drop me off!

Post marriage, I got company! We got up late every single day of our marriage with few exceptions! (Very few! Can count them with one hand!) As soon as we knew we were going to have a baby, every ones advice was "Sleep now, you can’t sleep later" and we did! Oh, how we did! Then BANG!, the baby arrived and everything changed! She arrived at 3.40 am and I was in labour through night, so I should have known its goodbye forever to my precious sleep!

For the first three months, things were very difficult but my mom was here to help me out and I don’t remember much! But after she left us, that’s when the actual motherhood set in! I started getting up in the middle of the nights without an alarm! I woke at the sound of Ashu stirring in her sleep! Once I got up at the sound of her making potty and woke my husband and told him to change her diaper! And he was like, "What? How do you know that?" This is the same woman who did nt get up even if thunder fell on her pillow, whose family missed a train because she did nt get up, who did nt get up to say goodbye to a cousin she wont be seeing again for a year, who made a scene to get up at her sister's friend's parent's house before the whole family, did nt get up one Diwali morning when it meant the world to her to burst crackers at the crack of dawn and last but not least does nt get up to fix a decent breakfast for the sole breadwinner of the family!

So if this is nt the miracle of motherhood, I don’t know what is! And if I can do it, anyone can!