The smell of burning martyr

Eve had a bad night last night, lots of wind, awake a lot, and I only got a couple of hours sleep. For the first time in a good few weeks I started to find myself losing the plot a bit about the lack of sleep. This was in part due to the fact that Eve has been sleeping much better lately, 3 or 4 hours between feeds overnight, and also because in my hazy, sleepy state I figured out that it has been 60 days since I had a semi decent nights sleep. That is only 20 days less than Mr Fogg took to go the whole sodding way around the world. This morning I was tired, feeling a bit shitty about both lack of sleep and the complete unfairness that I have a great baby except her digestion is screwed up.

However, I am a bit unusual it would seem, in HK, in that I do overnight myself. I was at lunch with colleagues yesterday and I found out that I am a bit of a novelty in not only breastfeeding overnight, but doing everything it myself. One colleague, whose wife is pregnant with the second child, has hired a maternity nurse to look after the new baby 24 hours a day for the first month. It is costing him an arm and a leg but they have decided that it is too hard to do it all themselves. Another colleague, who grew up in the Philippines thought it was strange I was waking up at all and I should be getting the nanny to do it - she described her family approach to new babies as one of "delegation".

I believe that you get no points for doing things the hard way so I find myself wondering why I continue to do the nights myself, and during the week when I let the Boy sleep, entirely on my own.

Perhaps this stems from the example of my own mother and sister who both did/do everything themselves. I feel I would be something of a fraud if they managed it and I didn't. I also want to spend as much time with Eve as I can before I head back to work and the nights are a lovely quiet time for the two of us to be together. I also feel that having a baby is not supposed to be easy, that sleepless nights are part of the deal and so I should go through it.

However, what this ends up with me being is something of a martyr about all this. It is the "no, I will do it" attitude but of course I will make sure that everyone knows I have made a big sacrifice/it is really hard. At baby group today we were even discussing the fact that we sometimes won't let our partners carry the bag/baby/push the buggy because we quite like being the "I do everything all the time and isn't it hard" wife. There is always a distinct smell of burning martyr at these times.

Is this a bad thing? On balance probably not. I could possibly do things with a bit more grace and stop complaining as much but it is tough, I am exhausted, and I really don't care who knows.

However, the Boy needs to be ready with the fire extinguisher.