The squeaks and squeals of the two mutants living in the room adjacent to our bedroom in this 250-square-meter hotel apartment disrupt my sleep every single morning. They wake up just in time when the sun rises in the east.
That’s 5:30 a.m.
Every. Single. Freaking. Morning.
Insomnia is my middle name and that degree of affinity with Missus I means that I sleep at 3:00 a.m. at the earliest. Do some simple math – go on, don’t be shy – and you know that I can only afford 2.5 hours of sleep.
That’s not even sleep.
That’s a nap, in my Mom’s vocabulary.
How do I remain sane despite this state of sleep deprivation?
Well – easy peasy – I’m not.
I’m not sane.
I’m far from being sane. I’m crazy – very crazy.
But if you define ‘sane’ as that state of mental presence where a mother is still able to carry out her household duties – such as, but not limited to, changing diapers, making milk, washing feeding bottles, feeding the kids three times a day (actually five including snacks and six if the children just inhale food), sending the kids to school, fetching the kids from school, folding clothes, giving the kids their baths, teaching them to sing the alphabet – with precision and almost perfect execution, then I guess, I can qualify in the humanity’s standard of what sanity is.
But, really, I’m not sane most of the time.
My brain cells are scattered everywhere and I do a lot of things at the same time. My nervous system is screaming for a break but, heck, what’s a break?
I complain about not being able to spend more time writing short stories or finishing newspaper articles or reading books. But my whining is due to the fact that I spend more than eight hours a day online talking to friends, writing some list-based articles, planning trips, and researching about diaper rash.
Some people asked me if I don’t feel like my own person was taken away from me the moment I embraced Motherhood.
Hell, yes! I am not the same person that I was a year ago.
To be honest, I don’t know anymore who I was before the 5:30 a.m. wake up call. And I’m not romanticizing this because frankly, to be shaken from a deep sleep is nowhere close to being called romantic. I am also NOT selfless – far from it – because I think of myself everyday especially when I can’t get a manicure and pedicure because my husband is out on a one-week business trip and I have no choice but to stay at home and take care of the twins.
I remember sleeping for 18 straight hours after a night of wild partying (you know, the kind of sleep that gives you a headache when you wake up and it’s already dinner time). There was no need to wake up early to prepare breakfast or to change someone else’s diaper. I didn’t have to think about anyone but myself. Cooking is manifested as one hurried call to a memorized hotline number that deliver food called fried chicken, rice, fries, soda, sundae, and another dessert that goes by the name “peach mango pie”. I remember traveling alone most of the time with my backpack as my buddy (no Boots like Dora the Explorer) and going back to my apartment very late (or very early…the next morning). I remember working hard until my eyes heart, and receiving awards and compliments for several jobs that were efficiently and effectively done.
So, you see, I wasn’t miserable. Those were fun times actually.
The person that I was some years was a person who made and scattered thousands of dots. I wrote an article about a public library – that was one dot. I made it to this list of distinguished individuals – another dot. I lived abroad in a country whose language I learned to speak and understand – a separate dot. I bought a house, sealed my first life insurance, went on a saving spree – three individual dots.
But it was hard to figure out how those dots are actually related to each other. It felt like there were different forces pulling me toward different directions and I just can’t see how those dots are connected to each other because it was just confusing. A lot of them seemed distant, unrelated, aloof. I don’t even know why I made some of them. I never saw the connection until I met my husband, Jeff, two years ago and gave birth to the twins – Nicholas and Antoinette – a year ago.
Everything just made sense. I completely understood what the proverbial line “When the time is ripe, the truth will reveal itself” meant. I began seeing the dots as connection points and all I needed to do was to draw lines to connect them. The library article was all part of a journey that led to my decision to take up Language and Literacy Education, exactly seven years after graduating with a Mass Communication degree, because I wanted to understand more about the process of reading, writing, and storytelling especially that I have this big dream of developing/writing children’s storybooks for my children. Studying a foreign language in a country far from what I then considered as home was meant to prepare me to live in that same country four years after (I now live in China, by the way). The awards I earned helped build up my confidence so I can be a better working professional, sure of herself, able to take on extreme challenges, and capable of addressing criticisms with an open mind.
While I do mind being shaken from deep sleep at 5:30 a.m., I wouldn’t want to go back to the ways things were before. Sure I would love a few drinking binge, here and there. But I have accepted the fact that things will never be the same again. Things are a little more complicated these days. Take travelling as an example. Solo travel is not a thing of the past but my groggy brain cells have already embraced the fact that travelling now involves four – not one – and that includes a truckload of diapers, milk, baby wipes, and diaper rash cream in my carry-on luggage.
Is it easy?
No!
Any Mother who tells you that it can be done while you’re wearing five-inch heels and bow-shaped cut out maxi dress is a complete liar!
When you become a mother, you turn into a different version of your previous self. You turn into someone else that not even you can recognize. You become vulnerable. You realize that so many things are not within your control. You realize that you can’t expect things to happen the way you want them to be because not all things will happen your way. You realize that patience is, indeed, a virtue and that every single human being in terra firma should be injected with that vaccine if ever it’s available. That comes with a hefty price tag for sure.
I mind being sleep deprived. I won’t lie and say that I am enjoying all these 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 30/31 days a month. I mean, come on, are you really going to tell me that in your entire life as a mother you enjoyed changing poppy diapers? Or smiled from January 1st to December 31st as you wiped messy tables from baby food and pulled out your wallet to give that hard-earned cash to the pediatrician’s secretary as payment for vaccines that cost thousands and thousands of pesos?
I don’t. I get humpy grumpy. In my low days, I think of my children as insensitive, selfish, inconsiderate aliens who turned me into this zombie. I look at them and I see two demanding, screaming, scheming little creatures who invaded my life and turned it upside down.
But you know what, even in the face of smelly diapers and costly vaccine shots, I wouldn’t wish for my old life back. Because even if I am so annoyed by the 5:30 a.m. wake up call, nothing beats seeing the smiles of my Nicholas and my Antoinette as they stretch out their arms the moment they see me saying: “Mama! Mama!”
That’s enough to keep me awake the rest of the day.
As for sleeping, well, I usually manage to squeeze in a short nap here and there in between diaper changes and mealtimes.
Told you I’m not selfless.
