Sleeping Like A Baby...

...is a very inaccurate metaphor.
Baby's do not sleep soundly. Nor do they sleep quietly, nor for long periods at a time.
In fact, new borns are really, freaking noisy sleepers. They sound like asthmatic hedgehogs dreaming of running, or snuffling, or possibly eating and drowning. Yes, at the same time.

Not only do they not sleep quietly, but they don't sleep for long. Maybe 4 hours in a stretch if you are lucky, and naughtily disobeying your midwifes strict instructions to feed them every 3 hours.

Looking after a baby is best summed up in one word.

Relentless.

For the first week of this ones life we were locked in a hospital where kind midwives would take her away in the middle of the night if my thoughts of "please can we give her back now," were becoming too obvious on my face. I didn't know who she was. I felt cheated out of that magical moment where your heart breaks when you first lay eyes on your baby. I kept waiting for it to happen.

For the second week, we were at home. Hubby and I putting in a valiant 'one night on one night off' team effort. Ourselves subsisting on meals made by friends, eaten in turns while the other comforted/fed/changed her. Stoically taking it in turns to have melt downs and question through exhausted tears our wisdom in taking this step, and our ability to actually keep ourselves alive, let alone one so dependant.

This week was week three. My motto has become "keep it together", played on repeat across the hours, which are now measured in feeds and sleeps and nappy changes. Hubby is now back at work, and we three have survived the first real week of the rest of our lives.

Our initial chance to bond with our daughter may have been interrupted by hospital incubators, IV lines and feeding tubes, but each day at home, I am getting to know her a little more. Each day I give her a few more kisses. Each day she feels a little bit more like she's my own, and a little less like a stranger. Each day we are keeping it together a little stronger, and becoming more of a family. Post natal depression hasn't got the best of me yet, and I intend to keep it that way.