Today I hear how a labor and delivery nurse tells a new mom what to put on her list of Things to Do each day after coming home from the hospital.
Sleep eight hours. It doesn’t have to be all at once, but you must fill up your sleep tank. Each day. Check it off the list. An hour here, an hour there. Sleep until you have eight hours each day. Then start again on your eight hours the next day.
I imagine little boxes–eight little boxes representing one hour each–that a new mom checks off and tracks, making sure she has enough.
Just like 8 glasses of water: 8 hours of sleep. Maybe it’s spread out with a million little naps, but you eventually fill the tank.
Sometimes I wonder how much easier life would have been as a new mom–or at any other time really–if I had just paid attention and tracked something so essential as sleep. And, apparently, if you sleep when the baby sleeps, it’s possible to fill your sleep tank.
But I didn’t, and it was terrible.
So I nod in fierce agreement with the new mom about checking the sleep boxes off the list.
I love adding simple but essential things to a list of what to do each day. The sleep wisdom applies to new moms and old moms, too!