No matter who you are, having a baby is an adjustment. Your sleep and freedom start to diminish, your frustrations, nipple pain and stress levels enhance and somehow, we all make it through while completely forgetting all those bad times we had because we have become so enthralled with this little tiny human and the brain gets foggy on how the past all went down.

I am one of these people who forgot the tougher times of having a baby. As I’ve mentioned previously, my first child was quite easy for the most part but after I had the twins, my brain did a bit of a rewind and reminded me of some of those darker moments I had in those wee hours of the night or after several full days with a newborn.

The big reminder was the night-time rage that ensues when you have a new baby (or babies) who won’t sleep longer than a couple hours or less at night. The frustration that happens when your baby thinks it’s a party but you are trying everything in your power to put them down to sleep for what you know will only be a few hours. Or when you get them down and then you stay up for another hour or so to watch a couple episodes of the bachelor and just as your head hits the pillow and you start to fall asleep, the baby wakes up screaming. Enter the night-time rage.

I should probably explain that the term “rage” does not mean that I am hurting my baby in anyway. It is simply explaining my frustration level and how you get pushed so far that you just want to scream or cry because you are so tired and trying to reason with a tiny human blob who doesn’t understand what you are dealing with. 

For a solid 3 months with the twins this time around, it was intense. Around 9pm every night, I would get anxiety about going to bed because I knew that I would only get short bouts of sleep and would have to listen to the shockingly loud grunts and groans that a gassy baby makes while sleeping. FYI, I sleep with earplugs every night and it still didn’t help. It was almost a sure thing that one of the babies would wake right around the time that I finally fell asleep and as I would sit there feeding and changing them for a full 90 minutes every time they woke up (remember, two babies is why it was so long), one part of me would find myself counting down how many more hours I would get if they fell back asleep in 30 minutes or 60 minutes until the next hour and a half feeding session and the other part of me just wanted to scream or cry. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry but preferred to go with the lovely parenting method of yelling “FUCK” very loudly every time they woke up. Here’s hoping it won’t be their first word?!

I should also mention that my husband would get up with me for some of those feeds and my amazingly helpful mom would stay over two nights a week in my bed with me to listen to my rants, loud F bombs and to help feed one of the twins while I fed the other. I am extremely lucky to have had both of them help but even with that, the night-time rage was still a real thing. Props to all the moms who don’t have the extra help because oh my god it’s brutal at times.

I wanted to write this all down so that I remembered those tougher times before the post baby phase amnesia kicks in. From here, I am going to continue with some of those harder moments in point form to explain more of the rage I (and probably some of you or soon to be some of you) have felt. For those who have not yet had a baby, you’re welcome for the honesty? 😉 Joking but don’t let this scare you and know that if you go through it, it does eventually end.

• Baby scream cries for a long period of time while we try and get her to sleep. Nothing works to calm her down

• Baby wakes up as soon as you fall into a deep dark sleep

• While changing baby’s diaper at 3am, he projectile shits all over you, the sheets and duvet to prolong your awake time. You decide to just put a towel down and sleep on that instead of changing the sheets because sleep is way more important and you are so angry that you will now only get a solid hour of sleep before the next feed

• Baby grunts so loudly while sleeping that you can’t actually get back to sleep and are now realizing that you will be up in another 30 minutes because it’s morning and everyone in the house will be awake soon

• Dog barks and wakes baby up

• Husbands freakishly loud alarm wakes baby up

• Baby wakes up because he slid to bottom of bassinet after we thought he had acid reflux and decided to angle his bed with towels but instead of a slight incline, we (me) made it like a steep black diamond run at Whistler where he may as well have been sitting upright… sorry buddy

• Baby wakes up for no reason 40 minutes after going down – clean diaper, fully fed… so I find myself starting to google “why is baby waking up” (hot tip: don’t ever do this because it is useless, painful and a big waste of time going down the rabbit hole of ridiculous mom forums) and then realize my child will be up in the next 10 minutes because I wasted all my sleep time on google and am again, angry about it.

• Soother pops out of baby’s mouth way too many times and they wake up screaming until you replace it over and over again. All you want to do is ram it back into their mouth and just whisper soft lullabies of  “Shut the F*** up”.
  TIP: Someone should invent soothers that are strapped to the babies face so they can’t fall out. Maybe that’s frowned upon but there has to be a way to make it happen where it doesn’t choke or suffocate a baby. I won’t patent this incredibly successful idea for whoever wants to design it but when and if you do, I expect a free prototype.

For those of you who have never experienced the rage, good for you! You should probably look into becoming a yoga instructor or something calm like that. Or maybe be someone’s night nurse because holy crap, I thought I was a calm person before having a baby… you must be Yoda. But not baby Yoda…the real old and wise Yoda.