Friday, December 9, 2016

Late Night Jitters / Early Morning Woes

So I find myself wide awake, here at 4:52am, hungry and wondering how I'm going to manage two babies when Number Two is out. Hoping to find some solace in my long lost blog, here I am, going through my old posts, and finding a half written post about Bart's first birthday party; dated 14th May 2016. MAY. 2016.

Gosh, what is wrong with me? Procrastination gets the better of many of us, but this, this really takes the cake.

I've always known myself to be of poor discipline, but after 20 months of being a mother, I am proud to say that I now, at least, make it a conscious effort to make my bed every morning. 

... Ok yeap, it's pretty bad. 

Hands up anyone else who's the same. Wait, no one?

So here's the cue for me to turn the iPad off and bury myself back in bed, and hope and pray my bad habits will all go away by the time the sun rises.

But no. 

I must finish this post. I read an article once that says it takes 21 days of repeating the same task daily to make it a habit so I'm going to try that with this blog and hope it works. Waking up at 4am though? Yea, probably shouldn't make that a habit.

Anyways, with that, here are some of the things that are keeping me up this fateful night. Feel free to leave advice, support, words of encouragement or your credit card details in the comments section. Ok wait, for the last bit, you can just email me. 

1. The Sleepless Nights.

Up until now, Bart still wakes several times in the night. On a good night, she falls back asleep without much fussing. On a bad night, well.... it will be lots of whining and pointing and me trying to figure out what she's pointing at and offering hugs and kisses and her not wanting a hug or a kiss but just that one damn thing she is pointing at but Mommy just doesn't know what it is then the whining turns into wailing and then outright screaming and yelling and the neighbours start to wonder "gosh,what are they doing with that child" and... ... You get the picture.  Yes, nobody said it was easy and I'm not complaining. But I really can't help but wonder how I'm going to handle this to the power of TWO.

2. Over-Simplifying Vs Over-Complicating.

I like to think that my other half and I work pretty well as a team. Ok, we really do. As long as there are no babies in the picture. He thinks I over-complicate matters, and I think he relies too much on winging it. Because at the end of the day, I'm the one that's doing most of the winging. Can't be helped right? I mean, I can't expect the man to breastfeed a baby.

The thing is, I totally winged it with Bart and on hindsight, though I think I did a pretty good job, there were a lot of things I could have done better, just to make my own life easier. Note: Just to make MY OWN LIFE EASIER. I mean, although I've never been much of a planner, I'm sure there's a pretty good reason why a wise person once said "by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

With the experience from getting through the first year with Bart still fresh in my mind, I figured I should make full use of this opportunity to get myself fully ready and prepared for Number Two.

"make my life easier make my life easier make my life easier"

I'm not whining.

With Bart, I started work 3 weeks after I delivered. I rushed to, from and even between shows on my scooter to ensure I could get home in time for her next feed. She breastfed exclusively. This means we're looking at every 2 hours MAX. Besides having to head out for work as early as 5:30am on some days (even after a whole night of feeding, diaper-changing and, oh gawd, colic), my work required me to shuttle to various schools located all over Singapore. I was torn between bringing home the bacon and bringing home the boob. Yet, we survived. Bart grew healthy and strong. And I didn't die of exhaustion.

But this does teach me one thing, a good plan could have and probably would have made all the difference.

This time round, I'm certainly not prepared to handle a toddler, a newborn, exclusive breastfeeding AND work all at once. So I put my foot down and told the father of my children that he's going to have to take over night duty. (ALL HAIL THE AMAZING INVENTION CALLED A BREAST PUMP!)

Will it work out? I don't know. You know how you can always plan and plan and plan, but nothing ever goes according to the plan anyways right?

3. How Do They Do It? HOW?

So social media is pretty evil. I look through all these posts on Instagram and see all these picture-perfect children doing all these picture-perfect things in their picture-perfect homes with their picture-perfect moms. And I have to be downright honest to myself about this. THEY can do it because they possess this amazing skill of being able to multi-task, because they have the ability to manage their time, to focus, to get things done. Of course, all this and on top of it, good cameras, an eye for detail and pure, genuine talent. 

All of these which I, sadly, do not have. So what can I do? Feel bad about it and stay up awake all night wondering why I can't be the same. Oh, talk about insecurities.

Anyways, I ended up finishing up this post only now because I fell asleep eventually. SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT NEVER BEING ABLE TO FINISH UP A TASK?! But that's ok. Sometimes we just need to be a little less hard on ourselves and a little harder on other people. Like how I've let my Dad come by last minute to pick Bart up for a day at Grandpa's. Well... he offered! And I really just want a nice, proper lunch and some rest before my show later this evening. Full-term and still on stage entertaining the general public. I'm really not that lousy after all.









No comments: