Tired, emotional and irrational.

Tired, emotional and irrational.

I read somewhere that all the hormones leave your body three months after giving birth and it’s around about then that new mums hit the wall, can no longer cope with all the sleep deprivation and become grumpy beeyatches.

Who knows if there’s something in it but can I just say… I AM SO TIRED. So tired. Sotiredsotiredsotired. At the moment my days feel like trying to swim through quicksand and much as I love my little bear, I just crumple when he goes to bed. Correction: I crumple after the 20 times I have put the dummy back in his mouth and patted him back to sleep and he’s finally gone down for the night.

Also, I have really low iron – I won’t bore you with the health issues surrounding it but trust me, adding low iron into the mix when you’re already knackered is pretty much kicking someone when they’re not already down but are in the foetal position in the gutter, rocking back and forth and whimpering.

And you know when you’re super tired everything just serves to really irritate you?

Like, people not picking up the phone when I have a teeny window to call them back. Call me an unreasonable control freak, but this may be the only window in the next month I have to call you. BE WAITING BY THE PHONE AT ALL TIMES FOR MY CALL PEOPLE.

Or the soles of my feet being SO SORE ALL THE TIME. I never knew my feet could feel so painful. I’m plodding along like an 80-year-old. In fact I hurt all over. Even my cuticles hurt. What’s up with THAT.

It also pisses me off going to the osteo and getting a million adjustments then my neck going out as soon as I go home and pick up the bubba. That’s $70 I didn’t have in the first place. Yay.

Carrying on an intelligent conversation is also proving near impossible so when I have visitors I often just nod and smile while fantasising about face-planting onto the couch into a deep, deep sleep for 3 days straight.

But the number one thing really DOING MY HEAD IN is not being able to get a park outside our house. There’s something doubly exhausting about having to walk around the corner and up the hill with a baby, a bag, a pram and all our other goods and chattles. Ditto trying to get a screaming baby into his seat while the car is on a slope. The back of the car also always slams onto my back when I’m trying to dismantle the pram and stuff it into the boot. Gravity, or something.

And don’t get me started on getting back from the supermarket and THERE STILL NOT BEING A FUCKING PARK OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE and having to juggle a baby, a pram and multiple shopping bags the extra distance to the house. FFS it shits me. It also shits me that since having Charlie, and really NEEDING that space outside our house, I have parked outside the house exactly twice because everyone in the entire street, nay, neighbourhood, seems to have suddenly procured a car or two. STOP BUYING CARS EVERYONE. THINK OF THE ENVIRONMENT. AND NEW MOTHERS WHO HAVE A BABY AND A LOT OF CRAP TO CART AROUND ON A DAILY BASIS.*

I feel like a total brat now. I mean talk about first world problems. But I’m also so tired that I don’t even care.

Do you guys agree that the happy hormones seep out of your system at the three-month mark? Or am I just having one of those days weeks months?

* My car is ten years old so I have no guilt about owning it whatsoever.
Journalist. New mama. Mr Chick's missus. Blogger at The Mama Files, Reality Chick, Letter To My Ex and Rachel's List. Author of sex advice book, Get Lucky. Writer for Good Health, CLEO, Woman's Day, Inside Out, NineMSN and many more. Current fantasy: adding a rooftop hot-tub to the house.

4 Comments

  1. Aran 9 years ago

    I fondly recall (now, as I hope to NEVER have to relive those moments of sleep deprived HELL) returning to my full time job when my first child was 4mths old, and being so desperate for a little more sleep one day as I got ready to head to the office that I set my alarm for 8.00am – it was 7.56am. You know you’ve reached some kind of limit when you’re so desperate for just another 4 minutes of being unconscious (not just asleep). I hear you sister! There’s nothing I can say to console you. Well, that’s not true – in about 5 years it’ll get so much better! There there.

    • Author

      I cannot BELIEVE you went back at 4 months. That would be me going back to full-time work in about 3 weeks. I think I would end up in the funny farm.
      Funnily enough I totally understand the 4 minute sleep thing. Right now any time unconscious is good.

  2. Bubble Girl 9 years ago

    No words will suffice . . . am just sending you a great big HUG instead (and hoping that that doesn’t annoy you!!) xxx

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