700 Hours

That is, on average, how much sleep you lose in the first year of having a baby.

That is 29 days.

So basically, a whole month of sleep- gone.

Like any other new Mom, I am not getting my blissful 8-9 hours of shut-eye a night like I did pre-baby. Right now I am kicking myself in the ass for all those Saturday mornings when I leaped out of bed at 7am so I could "tackle the day" instead of snoozing and being lazy until noon. What the hell was I thinking???

Oh sure, the advice everyone gives you is great in theory... "just sleep when the baby sleeps." Sounds like a good plan, right? And you spend your pregnancy envisioning blissful afternoon naps with a sweet infant snuggled in your arms, or peacefully asleep in their perfectly decorated nursery.

Ok, I actually had to stop typing there for a second because I was laughing at myself so hard.

In my 4 weeks of parenthood experience, there is no "sleeping when the baby sleeps"... you wanna know why?

Well, for the first week or so you are so worried that your child is just going to stop breathing at any given moment that you just sit there and stare at them the whole time they are sleeping.. making sure their lungs are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Then, when you finally calm down a little bit about the functionality of their organs... they get a bit older and more mature and just down right stop sleeping so much.

Like our dear little Austin.

Who, on most days, does not sleep during the day for longer than 20 mins every few hours or so.

These so-called "breaks" while he is sleeping are now my highly anticipated bathroom breaks, dishwasher unloading breaks, or my one and only chance to brush my teeth and put on a bit of deodorant so I don't start smelling like the Saturday Market (no offense to all hippies...).

And at night? Well, we have our good nights where he'll let us have a few 3-hour chunks of sleep
(oh the glory of 3 whole hours!!!!) but then we have our bad nights too. You don't want to know about those... you can just take one look at the bags under my eyes and draw your own conclusions.

nnkio  ljoigggnn.... .lmlo?98665??

Oh sorry... that was just me nodding off again... :-)