Having children took me from being able to sleep any time anywhere to having horrible sleep. One of my kids had an incredibly quiet voice in her first three months AND had a habit of spitting up copious amounts when we would put her in her crib. She would start crying and making choking noises but very quietly so I learned to be an incredibly light sleeper. She also would not sleep for the first month unless she was held (she got over it, it wasn’t a big thing, it wasn’t a medical problem, we checked), but it meant that I would stay up holding her and watching TV until 3am and then hand her off to someone else for the rest of the night, getting 4-5 hours of sleep. We sometimes had to keep lights on all night, sometimes TV on to keep adults caring for the kids from falling asleep themselves. It was brutal.

A part of it was the breast is best craze that has taken over parenting. I don’t disagree with it, but also some people just don’t produce enough milk to fully sustain a child and you need to supplement. When our kids were older my partner found out that her doctor actually noted that her breast tissue was likely to not produce sufficient quantities of milk on her medical chart, but failed to ever tell her. Hence feeding the kids 8-12 times a night, times two kids.

As a result years later I now can’t sleep for more than 5 hours a night without waking up and not being able to go back to sleep for an hour or two. I am slowly figuring out ways to combat this but I have yet to find a solution that lets me sleep a full 7-9 hours my body seems to actually need that doesn’t give me a headache or make my drowsy for the rest of the following day. Sometimes being human is a limitation.