Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Dream on


Isn't he precious? Watching my babies sleep makes my heart melt. They're all sweetness, eyelashes, and baby's breath.

Then I recover from my overly sentimental mommy moment and I get ferociously jealous. I'm so deprived of sleep that I get crazy-envious when I watch my own kids in a restful slumber. It's like a reflex or something.

I should tell you about me and sleep. It is my favorite. It is delicious. I cannot overstate my fondness for sleeping. And I seem to need a lot of it: an ideal night's sleep is about nine hours for me.

As if.
At this point, I feel lucky to get four hours uninterrupted. I feel positively indulgent if I get five.

The other day, in a particularly self-pitying moment, I figured it's been about a year and four months since I got an uninterrupted night's sleep. That's a little conservative. It has very literally been (at least) that long since I've gotten, say, six straight hours of sleep. (In case you aren't aware, it is physically impossible to sleep all night long during pregnancy, especially late pregnancy.)

Cruel, cruel world.

Okay, the obvious reason I don't sleep well is the baby. But he's a fair sleeper. (Believe me, the others were worse.) There's my husband, who is an inveterate snorer (god, when did we get this old???). And the fact that he gets up before five every morning, frequently waking me up in the process. And the big kids. They're good sleepers now, but our move kind of shook them up and made them a little more prone to awakening at night. And the storms. Seems we moved to our new home during the local monsoon season. I just want to sleep. Please?...
It's starting to show. I feel old. My brain feels numb. I have a frontal lobe of jello. Many times I struggle to complete a thought, simple math problems confound me, and rational thought is very nearly impossible. I am forgetful beyond compare. This is "mommy brain." In case you wonder if that's a real phenomenon, I challenge you to set your alarm for every three hours during the night for the next six months, and see how you feel at the end. (No naps allowed.) I've had to accept that people are going to think I'm dim-witted, emotionally unglued, and a complete airhead. It hurts my pride a bit, but it's pretty much the truth right now.
I know it will get better. I just have to try not to endanger anyone until then.

So sleep on, sweet babies. I promise I won't hold it against you. At least not for very long.




2 comments:

  1. One of Anthony's favorite comments of mine since we've had Andre was one night when I was nursing for the 10th millionth time, and both Andre and Anthony were totally snoozing, I had some sleepless rant about how neither of them CARE that I don't get any SLEEP because they get to sleep whenever they want to. aaaaugh. I feel you pain, dude. I feel your pain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I find myself slipping into martyr mode rather too often. I always regret those sleepless complaints later. But at the time, it seems only too true....

    ReplyDelete

Like it? Hate it? Any other reaction? Leave me a comment!