“It will get easier. It won’t always be this hard. Trust me.” These words are so often uttered to new parents in the throes of recovering from birth, learning how to care for a newborn and care for themselves at the same time. I often find myself saying these things to friends and families that I work with, because I know it’s true. We even said it in last week’s post! However, when I was a brand new mother, nothing could have seemed further from the truth. I was absolutely sure that I would never feel normal again and that life would always be this hard mess of sleep deprivation, constantly being needed, and just dying for a shower and a few minutes to regroup. As I write this, I can vividly remember feeling hopeless. There was nothing anybody could say to convince me that it would, in fact, get easier. But having come out on the other side, I now know that it really does get easier. And that knowledge is especially helpful when I’m faced with a new challenge. I remind myself that this too will get better.
I was talking recently with a family about a week after their baby was born. They were asking about sleep, and when they could reasonably expect their baby to consolidate her sleep even just a little bit. We talked about the needs of newborns and infants and their inability to distinguish between day and night. We talked about how all babies are different and there is no way to predict when their particular child will begin to sleep for longer stretches. But then we talked about how things will change, one at a time and almost without notice, and all of a sudden they will find themselves a bit more rested. They’ll look back on this time and realize that, yes, it did get easier.
Here are some things I told them will change over time that will eventually lead to them all sleeping more at night:
Baby will become more efficient at nursing, and each session won’t last for so long- Baby’s stomach will be able to hold more milk as she grows, and she won’t get hungry as often
- Mom will learn how to get baby latched more quickly and easily
- Mom will learn how to nurse the baby side-lying in bed and stay more rested during nighttime feedings
- Baby will begin to have longer stretches of wakefulness during the day, leading to more sleep at night
Each of these things will happen slowly and they’ll often happen one at a time. As they add up, sleep will be a bit easier to come by. When you’re in the thick of it though, it’s hard to notice things getting easier, even as they are doing just that. There’s always a new challenge or stage to learn, and that can overshadow all the good and all the learning that’s happening. This list of little improvements can be taken and applied to any challenge you might be experiencing with your newborn or infant. Is breastfeeding hard right now? Is communication with your partner about new responsibilities hard right now? Is managing bedtime with a toddler and a newborn hard right now? Try to brainstorm some small changes that might happen over time to get you to a place where it feels so much easier. Maybe then, you’ll notice those small changes, and feel encouraged as you do. Sometimes the best thing we can do is keep responding to our babies and wait, trusting that it will get easier, even if it’s hard to believe that it will.