Sleep

When you're pregnant everyone and their mama has a piece of advice for the first time mom. What is often highlighted is your future lack of sleep. Now I love my sleep. I'm a fan of the occasional afternoon nap and I have no problem sleeping for a little more than the recommended eight hours. As per the advice from experienced mothers, once baby boy was born, sleep became a new luxury. Something that I looked forward to with great anticipation. And this week has been a true testament to the shot of endurance you magically gain after giving birth.

Since Sunday night baby boy has refused to sleep. He doesn't normally sleep the night through, but his frequent waking has beeb worse than usual. It may be because he had a bit of a cold? Who knows. Teething? Probably. Well whatever the issue, husband and I are have been functioning on less than 5 hours of sleep every night. Monday night was a real test of patience. Not only did he wake up every hour but he cried constantly and threw up twice. So at around 2 am he had his second bath of the night. After which I asked if he was hungry to and he replied "yeah, uh huh". So off we went to the kitchen for some early morning breakfast. With his strength regained, baby boy tried to pursued me to hang out and play. And naturally I refused! We went back to bed with him still wanting to play. After some tough love of letting him cry it out, the sweet little baby fell asleep sometime towards 4am. And of course he was up at 7:30am, happy, with puffy eyes and ready to take on the day.

With nearly 17 months of child rearing under my belt, I pulled out all the stops on Tuesday. I made sure that he ate ALL of the food on his little plate. He put up a major fuss but I couldn't give in as my sanity was at stake. During the night time routine, instead of just moisturizing after bath, baby enjoyed a full body calming massage. I then gave him Quma (South African teething medicine). And add a sincere prayer that he'd sleep well, off he drifted to sleep.

The night was a dream. I got to unwind with some Beyonce favorites, there was an impromptu dance session (a great workout). We did our school homework and later husband hung up some of our wall art.

I'm now happy to write that both husband and I had a great sleep. Grateful.