Sleep Stealers

Do you remember sleeping in? Really? Do you?

I do, and I long for it at least once a week. You see, I am a sleeper. I used to sleep until 11:00 on the weekends! And when we got married, we'd go out on Friday and Saturday nights and sleep in that late together. Sometimes we'd get up, eat breakfast, and go back to bed until early afternoon. What a life.

Then I got pregnant. I still got to sleep in, but it was interrupted by the nightly trips to the bathroom. I think that slightly prepares you for having to get up in the middle of the night with your newborn. I said slightly. You think you're prepared. And then it happens. The baby is born.

The first night in the hospital is okay. It doesn't matter that you didn't get much sleep. You're still overjoyed at the birth of your baby! And it also depends on the hospital nursery staff. If your baby is born during the week, the overnight nurses are great. They try to find other ways to comfort your baby if he/she is crying only 30 minutes after you just nursed him. If your baby is born on a weekend, you may as well have the baby room in with you. Because, in my experience, the weekend nurses just bring he or she back again and say, "Your baby's hungry!" in that sing song voice you really don't want to hear at 2 am, and again at 3 am and 4 am......yawn.

You bring your baby home and settle into the routine of being constantly sleep deprived. When we brought our first son home, we put him in his crib from the get go, settled down to sleep at about midnight and turned on the monitor. And we both laid staring at the ceiling listening to the monitor. After about twenty minutes my husband said, "Amy, this is ridiculous. He's right next door, two steps from your side of the bed. Turn off the monitor."

I gasped, "No! What if he needs me and I don't hear him?"
"Trust me, you'll hear him. We'll BOTH hear him."

And so I turned if off. And went to sleep. Matt was right. I did hear him. Matt was wrong. We did not BOTH hear him. He slept like a log, while I was a wreck. Up, down. Up, down. Nursing, rocking, nursing, rocking, with a little bit of sleeping in between. I finally gave up and got up around 8. Matt rolls over, yawns, stretches, and says, "Well that wasn't so bad, he had a pretty good night, huh?"

Daggers shot out of my bleary eyes as I held out the baby to him. He got up, took the baby without a word and left the bedroom. Wearily, I rolled over, pulled the blankets over my head and finally slept.

In all honesty, there is no way you can prepare for life with a newborn, or even an older baby who just doesn't sleep through the night. You just live with it and through it and come out on the other side ready to do it again with number two and three child. I think it's better with numbers two and three children because you know what to expect. You know you won't sleep and you know your husband will.

I've had friends who have said, "If I'm going to nurse that baby, then he is darn well going to get the baby and bring it to me. I'm not going to be the only one doing the work." Or friends who pumped so they could sleep and their husband could take some of the feeding shifts. But I didn't do that. Maybe it's my wanting to be in control but I also knew that he had to get up and go to work and I didn't. Plus, for all of the years that I've known and loved my husband, he does not function well without sleep. He needs a solid 8-9 hours a day, where I can function very well on say, 6-7 hours of sleep. The other advice I've never followed is "Sleep when your baby sleeps." To me that was just wasted ME time. I got a lot done during nap times, even if it was just an hour of watching tv and reading people magazine with some cheetos. Somedays,that was my sanity saver.

Now that my kids are older, I get more sleep than I used to get. There are still nights when I don't sleep well. Those nights are when the sleep stealers come. I have a few sleep stealers that hurt my 6-7 hours a night. Their names are Gabe, Ben and Lyndee. And also, caffeine, adrenaline and worry. Let's start with the kids.

We finally got a king sized bed. Now, my husband and I are not small people. I'm 5-10 and he's 6-5. We could have survived with a queen, but when a little person almost always ends up in bed with us, a king became darn near a necessity. The boys have two ways they steal sleep from us. The first way has to do with what and how much liquid they consume before bed if you know what I mean. Even with the night light in the bathroom, they seem to need our help in the middle of the night. And when I say "our" help, I mean "my" help. My side of the bed is closest to the door, so I'm the lucky parent. We even tried switching sides of the bed but neither of us could sleep on the "wrong" side of the bed! The boys also steal sleep from us when they tap me on the arm and crawl up in between us. Most nights it's fine, but other nights the child wants to sleep perpendicular to us or not under the covers when we want to be under the covers. Sigh...

Lyndee doesn't steal sleep too often. Mostly when she's teething or has an ear ache. But then she cries and whimpers and it necessitates me getting up to snuggle and cuddle her. She doesn't like to sleep with us yet and won't sleep unless she's in her crib. Once she was laying between us and her breathing was very even. It was completely dark in the room and I thought she was asleep. I whispered, more to myself than her, Ready for night night?" There was a pause then a tiny whisper back out of the darkness, "No." So we cuddled a little longer till another whisper came out of the darkness. "Night night Mama."

Other things that steal my sleep are my addiction to diet coke. Although I've been better with that lately, not drinking it after about 7 pm. And adrenaline. By that I mean after coaching a BB game, I come home so wound up that I cannot go to bed even if it's late. I just have to unwind a little with some good reality tv before going to bed. Otherwise I just lay there, replaying the game over and over. Finally, worry is a big sleep stealer. I worry about everything....my kids, my team, my job or what's happening next year, my kids going to school/not going to school, my family members, etc.

Most of the time when I can't sleep I go over the blessings of my life and soon I'm sleeping. If that doesn't work, nyquil is my next best option.