Mommy Zombie
10:32 PM
With Halloween and the new seasons of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story upon us, I thought that now would be the appropriate time to share with you my Sleep Battle.
Emma's jammies are from The Gap
I have never been a particularly good sleeper. As a teen, I suffered from a wicked case of insomnia, and I would wake up bruised and battered from a fight I apparently had with the wall when I did happen to finally fall asleep.
In my early twenties, I discovered that I was an extremely light sleeper, when living with a roommate and a kitten brought about constant fights over nighttime noise levels and a battle of wills between me and Tyson (his tiny meow at the foot of my bed woke me up throughout the night).
Fast forward to living with Hershey. After 3 years of living on my own in Hackensack, Hershey revealed to me that not only did I kick and thrash violently in my sleep (which explained those teenaged bruises), but I also talked and walked in my sleep. Hershey spent many nighttime hours watching me shuffle around the apartment, talking jibberish and chasing imaginary cats. I wondered how many times I wandered the streets in my pj's in the Hack.
When we found out that I was pregnant, one of my biggest fears was that I would walk in my sleep once the girls were born. Truth be told, as I got farther along in my pregnancy, I grew to be too big to easily get in and out of bed without assistance (I once laid in bed for 10 minutes screaming Hershey's name to come help me out of bed so that I could pee, until I was reduced to tears because I COULD NOT get myself out of bed and I was afraid I was actually going to pee in the bed). Not only that, but I became so uncomfortable that my good friend Insomnia paid me a visit every night. I would slowly toss and turn for hours trying to find a way to lay in bed that I wasn't squashing a baby. Yeah. Right.
Once Jane and Emma arrived, sleep became a distant memory. While the girls were in the NICU, I was getting up every 3 hours to pump for 20 minutes so that I could bring breast milk (aka liquid gold for preemies) to the hospital for them every morning. Many times I slept through my 3 am pumping sesh and woke up in a lot of pain. There were also times that I was so tired that I dropped an entire bottle of freshly pumped BM that exploded all over me and the glider and everything in a 5 foot radius. On these nights I cried.
When we brought the girls home my sleeping habits just got worse. I was worried about the girls all of the time, and when someone came over to help out, I couldn't conscionably go to sleep while either of them were crying. And since Hershey was still working, I was on night duty all alone. I would get up with one, go through a 45 minute feeding ritual with her, put her down and get the other one to go through the same thing. After an hour and a half of this, if I was lucky enough to fall right asleep, I would get about an hour and 15 minutes of sleep before I had to start all over again.
I also was never one to understand when people told me, "When they sleep, you sleep." I mean, how did these people not live in a pile of sh*t when their kids were born?! When they sleep, I clean, cook, do laundry, shop online, run around in my underwear singing along to Luke Bryan... All of the things that I CANNOT DO while they are awake!!! So basically, I don't sleep.
These days, Jane and Emma are on a much better sleeping schedule. We have moved them into their nursery, into their own cribs, and the reflux is all but gone. They still fuss a bit in the night, usually after they have been in bed for about 5 hours. We're working on figuring this whole sleep thing out together. Hershey is snoring by my side as I type, but I have too much energy left in me to sleep right now. And this is my cross to bear.
There are nights now that I sleep so soundly that I wake up in a cold sweat, afraid that I've slept through some incident in the night that Hershey did not hear since the monitor is next to me. On those nights, I fly from my bed and into the nursery, only to find the twincesses sleeping soundly. I then return to bed so pumped full of adrenaline that I just lay in bed staring at the monitor for an hour, waiting for a finger twitch or a chest movement to tell me they're ok.
It's the next morning at work that I feel like a walking shell of my former self. Man, do I miss sleep! I would give anything for one straight, restful 5-6 hour clip of sleep.
How are nights treating you? How do you deal with sleep deprivation?
Hope you have lots of fun Halloween festivities planned for the weekend! We will be in Hershey's sister's wedding this weekend in Philadelphia. More on that next week!
And if you like me, please click the link below!
And if you like me, please click the link below!
0 comments