by Jennifer Shakeel

Many expectant parents are swept up in the romance of having a new baby. We tend to get so excited over the arrival of baby that we forget to think about the changes that are going to take place, whether we want them to or not. As wonderful as being a new parent is, whether this is your first child or second or third, having a baby will change your life forever.

I think that it is a given that restful nights of sleep are a thing of the past, and for at least one parent, so are regular showers. New parents often sleep two or three hours at a time, because their infant has a bi-hourly or tri-hourly feeding schedule. It often happens that the parent has just fallen asleep only to awake to their infant’s crying. This irregular sleeping schedule changes little throughout the average baby’s first year of life. I laugh at this really; I have three children, the first two slept through the night from the moment they came out. The most recent addition to our family though, has an agenda all her own. Some nights she sleeps through the night, some nights she is up every 45 minutes, other nights she is up ever two or three hours. I have decided that it depends on where the moon is sitting in the sky and the direction of the wind.

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