Te Amo Sleepy Time

Sometimes I really can't believe how late I used to stay up.  On any random week night I would stay up until 11, sometimes midnight.  And on the weekends I would often stay up until 1:30 or so just because I could.

No more.

These days I go to bed no later than 10pm.  Preferably by 9:30.  Simply put: I gotsta get my Zzzz's.  To get my solid 8 hours, taking into account Jack's 6:30 wake up time, the 3-4 times per night that Rosie wakes me up with her collar bling, and my own bathroom breaks, I need to be in a full REM cycle by no later than 10.

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Obviously that means dinner and general life maintenance have to be done earlier than pre-baby days.  I usually have dinner on the (TV) dinner table by 7 right when Jack goes to sleep.

So you can imagine my horror last weekend when Grant made me wait until 8 o'clock to go out to dinner with his friends.  I seriously felt like I was being abused.  I was only going to be getting my entree by the time I am usually having my pre-bedtime dark chocolate square!

We also had someone over for dinner a few weeks ago and when the conversation was still going after 9pm, Grant and I both got so panicky that we nervously drank an entire bottle of $5 wine that he bought while we were chatting.  We paid for that handsomely the next day.

Sure, maybe I need to loosen up a bit.  But instead, maybe group dinners and TV shows need to start coming on at 5:30 or 6.  Did you ever think about that?!

It's funny how priorities change.  My post-5pm concerns used to be 1) Do I have enough wine to last me through the night? 2) Do I have at least 4 hours of entertainment on my DVR? 3) Is my luscious fleece blanket out of the dryer?

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Now they are: 1) Is my baby going to stay asleep? 2) Did I lock the doors? 3) Buy bye.

Jack Gets ALL the Worms

Last week Jack did not sleep the best. I think it was because he is a little sick.

But it made me a lot sad.  I swear waking up in the middle of the night at this stage in the game is even more of a gut punch then it was when he was waking up every hour because I am no longer conditioned for this shit.

Top o' the mornin' to ya, sucka!

And to keep me even more on my toes, he's been waking up around 5:30am for about 3 weeks now.  First of all, that is les miz no matter your circumstances.  Secondly, I simply do not have enough things to do in the day to start at 5;30.  And third, and perhaps most importantly, it makes me hungry for lunch around 9:30am.  This is good for no one.  Especially saddlebag A and B.

I'm going to start making him stay up a little later each night to see if that helps.  If not, when we are in Texas this weekend he will be waking up at 4:30am local time, so that will just be stupendous.

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I hope staying up a little later works.  Or maybe he will just grow out of it.  But I just refuse to accept this as the new norm.  Denial is a beautiful thing.  So is sleeping in pass 6am...from what I remember.

Go the F*ck to Sleep

 

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Pretty much all my life it has taken me a minimum of one hour to fall asleep (sometimes 4), I could never take naps, and never, ever sleep on planes. 

 

Meanwhile my sister, while never officially diagnosed with narcolepsy, can fall asleep while watching a thriller, nap at the drop of a hat, and might never have actually seen a plane takeoff.

 

I was hoping my son's sleeping habits would take after his Dear Aunt Nancy.

 

No such luck. 

 

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Not only has it taken him up to 3 hours to fall asleep on some occasions, he will actually sit there and stare into the monitor at you while you're hoping for him to slumber, like,

"I see you.  I know you're watching.  But sorry, this little guy is still wide awake!"

 

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Have you heard of the miracle blanket?  It looks like a human torture device but the first time I used it he slept 6 hours straight...and then, no more miracles ensued.  He was sleeping 3 hours at a time until a couple of nights ago when he decided to go back to 2.5 increments, just to keep me on my toes and my under eyes black as night.

 

It looks like it's physically impossible to break out of this thing.  And I truly thought it was.  Until last night, when I woke up to feed him and he was basically wearing a miracle blanket fanny pack, arms free, legs  a' moving, blue cloth just dangling at his waist.  He is like the incredible hulk.  Or the Great Houdini.  But what he is definitely not is a sleeper like his Aunt Nancy.

 

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I also tried a "dream feed" a couple of times and went to bed naively thinking that I wasn't going to hear from the little guy until 5am in the morning.  WRONG!

 

He chugged the bottle as if it was nothing and then woke up 2-3 hours later for more milk.  He's a hungry little fella!

 

The only good news about this sleep stubbornness and his fondness for spitting his pacifier out 16,000 times per night while drifting off is that, since I don't have the time or help to exercise for the foreseeable future, at least I get exercise in the form of short sprints every time I race to his room to put the pacifier back in before he loses it.

 

This will serve me well if I decide to join or flag football team.  Or get chased by an assailant who hates going in straight lines.

Back in Bed

After 3 weeks of sleeping in a twin bed in the nursery with Jack, I finally slept in my own marital bed last night.  And it was intermittently glorious. 

 

I didn't get a full night's sleep.  Not by a long shot!  But I think I got a little more than "usual" without sleeping in such close proximity to my boy.  See, despite being just under 11 pounds, Jack seems to be able to emulate the noises of a wildebeest with a brain infection.  His grunts sound like he's doing baby Crossfit and his "coos" sound like he is trying to mate with the world's smallest Beluga Whale.  It's on a very sonar level.

 

His noisiness is rivaled only by his cuteness.

 

We stayed at my parents' beach house last weekend and it was the first time Grant has ever had to sleep in the same room as Jack and/or get up with him in the middle of the night.  The first thing he said to me the next morning was, "Woah.  That was intense."

 

All those little baby grunts earned me a lot of respect for how much sleep I do not get.

 

Never to be outdone, Rosie likes to use the Boppy as well.

 

So, even though I still had to get up every 2 to 3 hours, I got to snuggle with Rosie by my side in a King size bed, so it was an vast improvement from my lonely twin bed.  Here's hoping he's one of those sweet little babies who decides to start sleeping through the night by 6 weeks old. 

 

 

Scream

The other day when I posted this post about not being able to fall sleep, I got a few funny suggestions of how to solve my problem.

One was to picture myself alone, floating on a raft in some body of water, in complete darkness. This sounds good in principle but didn't work for me because I kept thinking of a shark swimming by me in the dark, popping my raft with its fin, and then eating me in violent bursts. The only thing that terrifies me more than trying to go to sleep is sharks and large bodies of water.

The other suggestion I got was to picture myself alone, in a dark movie theater, waiting for a movie to play, and then nothing ever comes on the screen.

Next thing I knew I was Omar Epps, the token black guy in Scream 2, getting stabbed in the ear through a bathroom stall at the local Cinema. Needless to say, that visualization didn't work either.

Oh well. The suggestions might not have made me sleep but they sure did make me laugh in the end. Keep 'em coming!

Abduction is Blind

For the 3rd time since being married for a year, I'm living by myself again. This time only for 4 weeks.

On the nights I don't ease my worries with lots of wine, I get kind of scared at night. I'm not going to lie!

Last night, after trying to sleep for about 3 hours, I just got up and went to the bathroom for something new to do. I didn't bother putting on my glasses.

I started thinking that if there was someone downstairs to get me, the only thing that would suck worse than being abducted is being abducted without your glasses on! Hostages have it bad enough already. To be a legally blind hostage would just be too much to handle.

2 more weeks and I'm out of my dumpy house and my nighttime solitude...and moving in with my parents! I assure you I won't get lonely there!