By Sarah Davies
My introduction to motherhood started with a bang. In less than 24 hours, I had spent a day at work, celebrated my husband’s birthday, and met our new baby daughter who decided to arrive a month early.
Thankfully, our daughter was born strong and healthy, but she needed a lot of encouragement to feed as she was a late pre-term baby. She wouldn’t wake up for feeds and would fall asleep while feeding. It became a delicate balance between making sure she was feeding sufficiently and getting my milk supply going. I was set up with a hospital-grade electric breast pump, which I had to use at least 6 to 8 times a day, to express milk and to establish and maintain an adequate milk supply. In between those times, I was feeding her my expressed milk from a syringe with a tiny tube through a nipple shield to simulate breastfeeding. Then she’d sleep, I’d pump, and then we’d feed again. My sleep? I don’t really remember sleeping then.
In time, I could stop the pumping and just breastfeed her. The amount of freedom I gained from this alone was so incredible that the interrupted sleep didn’t bother me so much. I also no longer had to rely on an alarm clock to nudge me to make sure she was feeding sufficiently. I could start to rely on her cues, and together we found our groove.
At about 11 weeks in, we hit some unexpected turbulence, my mother passed away suddenly. I was left heartbroken; I was grieving, and I felt like I was all over the place. Both emotionally and physically – we lived in the USA, but my family lived in the Netherlands. We jumped on a plane to Amsterdam, and I spent the next 6 weeks sleeping on a pull-out sofa and my daughter in a little travel cot. Starting a bedtime routine or following any type of schedule was the last thing on my mind. I was running on instinct.
The change of scenery of being in the Netherlands did not seem to bother my daughter. I guess we had established a routine of sorts, as there was naturally some predictability to our days and nights. There was repetition, just no set schedule. This allowed for much-needed flexibility as we weren’t at home. I continued to follow her cues, and for the rest, we just went with the flow. She generally had no problems sleeping no matter where we were. My sleep on the other hand wasn’t great. I was grieving, and sleep just did not seem to come easily. Having her wake up for nighttime feeds was more of a comfort to me than a disturbance at that time. It made the nights a little less long and a little less dark.
When we returned home to the USA, we did become a bit more conscious about creating a bedtime routine. One that involved both parents and could be moved anywhere, so we decided to introduce bedtime reading. It became a key part of winding down for bedtime, no matter where we were. To this day, we still do this every night. With daytime naps, we were a lot more flexible. In that first year, we were still going back and forth, from the USA to Europe, to be with family. Some daytime napping was on the go or elsewhere altogether, so those naps couldn’t always be associated with her cot. During this time, I would keep an eye on the recommended sleep guidelines for each developmental stage, but mostly I just tried to be sensitive and open to my daughter’s cues.
In the next blog, you will read about what changed when Sarah became a mother for the second time and moved to the Netherlands. Stay tuned!
Sarah Davies has a background in international education, supporting students studying abroad in the UK and the USA. She is originally Welsh, but grew up as a third culture kid, where she spent most of her childhood outside her parents’ culture. Growing up between cultures helped her understand the importance of belonging and how essential it is to have a support network. Sarah is now a mother of two children; her oldest was born in the USA and her youngest in the Netherlands.
