Bouncing back

2 September 2020

“Ball,” Lochie announced, as he catapulted my apple down the stairs. It did not bounce but landed flatly on the wooden floor, bruised.

That’s how I feel.

Who’s been hit the hardest by Victoria’s stage 4 lockdown? Aside from frontline health workers, I think the most impacted are those people who are at major turning points in their lives: adolescent girls traversing puberty, ripening year 12’s preparing for university, engaged couples amidst wedding-planning, first-time mothers – birthing in morbid hospitals, navigating postnatal hormones, warily fearing depression in an ISO-depleted mental state, while sleep deprived, masked, and alone.

Not me. I’m a second time mum, I have a spectacular 2-year-old toddler and a 6 month old, a husband working from home, both sets of grandparents, a nanny, a cat. Who could be down in such upbeat company?

Yet down we are. And bounce back we must.

Two nights ago we started sleep training Jono. After being a great sleeper from birth, he encountered the 4 month sleep regression. I thought that the 4 month sleep regression was a temporary destabilisation of sleep habits that occurs when the baby is 4 months old.