ASK

How mentally and physically stronger do we get when we have children?

The difference between me being productive and happy versus unproductive and unmotivated pretty much comes down to how much sleep I get. The difference is night and day (excuse any sleep pun).

If I am asleep before midnight and sleep straight through till 7am, I am a dynamo all day.

If it's 1am and I am up at 6 am (newborn, nursing, sick kids, insomnia...name your reason) then I eat badly (I target greasy and salty foods, I have no idea why) and am not a happy person. Everything moves more slowly, my motivation is terrible and I feel down.

The only time this does not happen to me, is when I am exclusively nursing (I'm not a pumper). My youngest, now one and a half years old, nursed around the clock every 2 hours for 6.5 months. If any normal person - me included - was up every 2 hours from 11pm to 7am for at least half an hour, and then up all day long and very busy - they'd collapse. Yet I was ok. Granted, I was tired at times, but still up for extended periods at 11pm, 1am, 3am, 5am and then 7am for the day. Every single night for six and a half months.

How does that happen and what makes it even possible? Hormones? Post-partum shifts? Motherly duty? Instinct? An "I have no choice" attitude?

I had read legitimate stories of parents able to lift massive objects they could normally not even move an inch, in order to save their child.

Now that my daughter has self-weaned, I don't think for a moment I could handle the torture of the kind of schedule that seemed normal for so long. I don't think I could take it from a mental standpoint either.

My children seem to be my trigger for sustaining a schedule that would normally seem physically impossible.

Has anyone else been fully capable of actions regarding their children that they are fairly sure they could never do if their offspring were not involved?

Or maybe it's not children, it's a particular career? A cause? Is it a woman thing? A parent thing? Or does it come down to how a particular person deals with the situation she is currently in? I'd love to hear your stories -