All You Need Is Sleep...Sleep Is All You Need

So, I have the secret to balancing two kids...shhhhhhhh....let's keep it between you and me. It's sleep. And of course, what new mom gets any sleep? Not very many, I can tell you that much. But I do notice this: the nights that I get a good, consecutive number of hours sleep bring on days where dealing with a toddler and a newborn seem relatively easy (and when I say easy, what I really mean is tolerable). The nights where I get no sleep bring on days when I feel like tossing both kids in the composter (a friend of mine once pointed out that there is a picture of a baby on the green compost bins, therefore it must be okay to toss them in there at some point, no?)

Everyone always says "make sure you sleep when your newborn does"...but they forget that I have a toddler and I could win the lottery sooner than I would have a day when both kids are sleeping at the same time...so my husband and I came up with (read: I strong-armed him into agreeing to) a plan. Although not entirely romantic, we do night time split shifts. He does the 11pm to 3am shift and I do the 3am to 7am shift. This way we ensure that each of us gets x number of hours of uninterrupted sleep. Perfect right? Well almost perfect, because, as all of you breastfeeding moms know, your boobs don't always follow the sleeping schedule. My boobs are on a "fill up every two hour" schedule, which makes for an extremely uncomfortable and wet sleep on most evenings. If I sleep longer than 4 hours I end up looking and feeling, for the most part, like this:

So, even though my thoughtful husband allows me to sleep as much as I can to ensure his kids don't end up at the City of Toronto waste management site, my bags o'milk aren't as considerate. Thankfully I have many hands in the babysitting kitchen so I have some breaks during the day. So, all of you out there looking for advice on how to keep your sanity as a new mom. Sleep. Sleep as much as you can, whenever you can, wherever you can. I doesn't matter if you're on the toilet, it doesn't matter if you're breastfeeding, just DO IT. Trust me. Your children will thank you for it in the long run.

I wanted to quickly give a shout out to Ian, Adrienne and Charlotte. Congratulations on baby Kieran. We can't wait to meet him, and we're so happy that you had a quick and safe delivery!