Night Feeds, Thirst and Pina Coladas

Being a mum automatically makes you thirsty because you never have time to drink.

Night feeds however make you even more thirsty than usual and it can become some kind of vicious circle.

You drink, you need the loo. You get the raging thirst, you drink, you need the loo.

If you’ve never experienced night feeds ( lucky you) it feels like that feeling you get when you get up at 3am to go to the airport for a holiday.

It’s a long time since I went on holiday but you know that stinging eye-dry mouth feeling you get as you check your baggage in bleary eyed? 

Just like night feeds.

Without the glass of vodka at 3am (it is the beginning of your holiday, after all) and the promise of sun.

I think every time you have a baby, once the night feeds are over and the child sleep through, you totally forget what it is like.

So when you are faced with a newborn again, it can be a bit of a shock to the system. It has been for me.

You amaze yourself at how you can even function with so little sleep. Coffee is your friend until you feel a bit sick and jittery from the sheer volume you have funnelled down your throat in the space of 26 seconds.

I honestly feel I was spoiled with my first child. Everyone said sleep when she sleeps and I never listened.

What a fool I was.

By the time baby number two and three come along, if someone says sleep when they sleep, I feel like pinching them.

As if you can sleep when a certain two-year-old (known lovingly as the stunt man) sees eye shutting as weakness and a chance and has been known to use toys as a tool to pole vault over baby gates.

If you are currently madly cleaning and making your house perfect with your first child, stop.

Lie on the sofa, get into bed, lie at the foot of their crib if it makes you feel better. For goodness sake, I wish I had.

Now, I will be dreaming of beaches and Pina coladas during night feeds, and quelling my night thirsts with my 33rd drink of the night (water not cocktails).

Followed very shortly by my 34th toilet break of the night.

Chin chin.