For the past two months, I have been struggling to sleep. Even before bedrest began, my contractions were always strongest in the early morning hours (1 – 4 AM) and it has been often 3:30 – 4 AM before I fall asleep. With Daniel getting up at 5:30 for work and the kids waking between 6 – 7, you can imagine I have been feeling the effects of sleep deprivation.
I certainly have a greater appreciation for its use as a torture tactic! I feel like a different person without sleep, capable of all sorts of grouchiness and ineptitude that I never knew could describe me. . . I really struggle to function on a number of levels with this little sleep, which is why I try to nap whenever the kids are napping (I usually get to sleep another hour or two, if I’m lucky!). Daniel says I’m much nicer in the evening, after my nap. 😉 I know it’s true.
I realized during Carissa’s pregnancy I was on procardia for a couple of months, which didn’t do anything to reduce my contractions, but kept my blood pressure so low that I could hardly stay awake, day or night. While I was hospitalized on the Mom Unit with Carissa, the nurses would literally wait to take my blood pressure until after I had walked around, because they weren’t supposed to give me procardia if my blood pressure was already less than 90/50, and without walking first, my blood pressure frequently dropped lower. So until week 37, I had “help” sleeping. . . and I do remember experiencing the insomnia between weeks 37-40, but that was nothing compared to literally two months of almost no sleep!
So we are trying to figure out when my body can sleep, and work our family schedule around it.
Tonight I was excessively tired after dinner, so I put Carissa down for the night around 7:30, and Daniel took the older two.
I was exhausted, so I didn’t even go back downstairs. I just lay down in bed and instantly fell asleep. Daniel came in our room after putting the kids to bed and said to sleep as long as I could. I said I felt guilty—I hadn’t yet cleaned the kitchen, picked up the living room, or made his lunch for work—and he said if I woke up later and couldn’t sleep, I would have time to do some things then. I went right back to sleep, and it felt so good. . .
Until all of a sudden, I hear my four-year-old shouting next to my bed, “Mommy! Do you know Micah is sleeping in your bed?!”
Now I do.
I asked Mara why she was my room. She told me she got up to go potty and saw Micah’s door—and my door—were both open, so she went to find Micah. When he wasn’t in his room, she found him—in my bed! The way Mara reported it, you would have thought she had just discovered that her brother had just killed somebody.
I don’t know if my eyes had completely opened yet, but I hadn’t seen Micah. I’m sure he was thinking “I’d better get out of here,” since Daniel had warned him sternly not to get out of bed.
But right at that moment, I heard a “thunk.” Probably trying to escape, Micah had bonked his head on Daniel’s nightstand and began screaming his characteristic drama scream. He should really get into acting.
I, of course, was still trying to “come to,” when next I heard Carissa’s blood-curdling cry coming over the baby monitor. (She has been waking up screaming in the night lately, and I don’t know if it’s nightmares or what? I usually change her diaper, give her more water in her sippy, hold her and sing to her for a minute, and she is content to lay down again.) I was surrounded by screams.
Before I could get up, Mara ran back into the girls’ room. Over the baby monitor, I hear her say, “Be quiet, Carissa! I’m trying to put Mommy to bed!”
Carissa’s—and Micah’s—screams continued, even louder. So Mara paused, then asked Carissa, “Are you having bad dreams?”
By that point, I wasn’t going back to sleep, so I went to the girls’ room. Carissa quite literally lept out of her crib into my arms and clung to me with her head on my shoulder, patting my back with her little hand.
Maybe it was a bad dream. Or maybe Carissa was worried, thinking that Mara was actually going to be in charge of putting Mommy and the other kids to bed from now on.
If only Mara could put me to bed and get me to sleep alllll night. . .