Relax, new mom!

Sit back and smell the baby powder, as the case may be! Your baby won’t be 18 in the blink of an eye, although it may seem so on hindsight. Neither will she raise hell just because you decide to take a nap between feeds, while she is cared for by your mom or husband or whoever trustworthy is at hand. Trust me, she won’t even notice you are gone!

I can’t even begin to count the number of times both moms had told me to take rest while the baby would sleep. But it was almost like a point I had to prove to myself – I would figure out the most inane things to do and complete them.

If only I had heard them out.

From my personal experience, all I have are three pieces of advice for all new moms – SLEEP, SLEEP and SLEEP some more!

Your muscles

Sleep gives your muscles the much-needed time to relax. After all, they have been through a strenuous nine months and a labour thereafter. Your naptime is their zone to recuperate, gather their strength and get stronger. Give them that time.

Warding off exhaustion

Like our little ones, we are learning a lot about how the world functions with a newborn baby in tow. That means out senses are at an all-time high round the clock. Watching for that cry, a twitch of the corner of her mouth, a wrong moan – anything that could trigger off an alarm. Sleep would give your senses some much-needed rest too. Else, exhaustion eventually catches up and (do note) our days of sleeping ‘like a log’ are, unfortunately, over!

Rest for the back

This was one of the most important things I heard, and ignored! Lying on our backs. Holding a baby, trying to feed her while sitting upright all after a normal or C-sec can be strenuous for our body. It helps to just lie back in bed straight as a rod and let our backs stretch out.

Keeping our wits about us

Sleep, in any case, is necessary so that we can be alert at times that we are awake. Lack of sleep or being drowsy when the baby is awake may mean that we miss something crucial or a misstep that we can’t afford. So, even from a safety point of view, it is important hat we sleep so we can be mentally alert when she is.

Most of the above I have learned from more obedient moms who clearly paid heed to their elders.

So, lie back and enjoy the trip through dreamland.