Once you start getting a full night of sleep after those early infant days, the world suddenly blooms around you. The sun shines brighter, your children seem nicer, and your Husband looks more appealing.
You lose that blurry haze that seemed to surround your thoughts and actions for months upon months (sometimes years!).
Your ability to have a complete thought returns. And instead of grunts, head shakes, and finger pointing- you may find yourself using complete sentences.
You are once again capable of throwing an outfit together that doesn’t include spit-up stained sweatshirts and yoga pants. And you may even accomplish doing something to your hair other than a messy bun. You may find yourself applying lipgloss and mascara. Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves though, the rest of the makeup will make a come-back around the time that your children enter elementary school.
You will finally be able to sit through more than just the opening credits of a movie before nodding off. Sometimes, staying up later than your significant other for the first time since you can remember. A little time leftover at the end of the day spent for yourself will be so refreshing!
Meal planning, bill paying, and over-all decision making; those mundane tasks you thought you would never be able to accomplish again become a breeze. You may begin to find yourself able to multi-task for the first time since you became pregnant.
Waking up with a smile on your face will no longer be just a memory (if you ever did that before having kids). You will wake up refreshed and ready to face the day. You may not even “need” that morning coffee…but, you’re not a quitter. Go ahead and enjoy it anyway.
Though the no-sleep stage may last for what seems like a small eternity, and your child may go through several phases of not sleeping- one day it will get easier. You will wake up one day and realize you actually slept. Then it will happen again, and again, and again. And suddenly you realize you’re sleeping through the night!
So don’t lose hope, exhausted Mommas! Raise your coffees and repeat after me- “I will sleep again, I will sleep again!” And once you do, go encourage a fellow Mom who hasn’t quite reached that milestone. Take her a latte and tell her it’ll be over soon.
