More sleep woes
Jan. 17th, 2008 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judecorpI am going to do some bitching and complaining. If you don't want to read some bitching and complaining, you can skip it because I will be nice enough to cut it.
I am sofa king tired it is not even funny. I am used to functioning on small amounts of sleep and am not a long or thorough sleeper by any stretch of the imagination, but an average of 4 hours per night for the past two weeks is unacceptable and bordering on torture. Especially when those 4 hours (sometimes 3, sometimes 5) are not in one nice, tidy chunk but instead are in a couple of bursts, intermittent with baby wake-ups and Jen's snoring and cats that want to step all over me.
I knew going in that having a baby would mean loss of sleep, and I am okay with that. It is a short period of time in the big picture and I will get through it like everyone else does. I guess I just didn't plan on the All Night Party stage coming at the same time as the Only Mama Will Do For Sleeping stage. Punk went from sleeping from 7-6:30 with one wake-up to eat and a quick resettle by either parent to waking frequently throughout the night, needing copious amounts of settling (sometimes as long as 3 hours), and only allowing me to do this. All at once. In like one day. And I am Losing. My. Mind.
Let's take last night: we do the bedtime thing and Punk ends up finally in the crib asleep at 7:30pm. That's a little longer than usual but not terrible. She wakes up at 9 and is back down after a very quick resettle, maybe 15 minutes. I decide that I should try to get to bed early so after this, I wash the bottles and the dishes, clean the stove and the counters, make formula for the next day, and fill up the cats' water. I go to my computer to start shutting it down. It is 9:50 and I am hoping to be in bed by 10:05. Except Punk wakes up at 10. I go in to resettle and she is not having any of it. She falls asleep instantly in my arms in the rocking chair and the second I put her in the crib, she pops awake and starts thwapping her arm around. (Arm. Singular. The other is in the swaddle.) I attempt this several times until about 11 when she actually closes her eyes in the crib. Jen has already gone to sleep in the time I have been in there, even though I was supposedly going to bed early.
Five minutes later, Punk is back up and Jen asks if I am going to get her. I tell her that I am not planning to attend the All Night Party and she is going to have to have it without me. Jen goes to try to resettle the baby and after a few minutes says she is going to get a bottle. She feeds the baby and then says the baby won't go to sleep, but I wait it out and in a few minutes she is full-out howling. And Jen is upset, too. So I send Jen back to bed and I let the baby fall asleep in my arms, try to put her down... do all of that over again a couple of times and she goes back to thwapping the arm. Finally I swaddle both arms in, she falls asleep and I drop her in the crib and she stays asleep. It is 12:30am.
I then can't fall asleep because Jen is snoring, and the last time I see the clock it is 1:30am. The next time I see the clock it is 3:45am and the baby is awake and fussing. I wait a minute to see if it will escalate, and it does, so I haul myself back up and get her back into the rocking chair and get her back in the crib by 4:30am. I fall asleep probably around 5:15am and Jen's alarm goes off at 6:15am.
This has become a typical night. And it's really starting to become a problem. I have bad knees from too many years as a catcher on a baseball/softball team and they get achy when I don't get enough sleep. A couple of days ago I had to start taking Advil round-the-clock during the day because they were bothering me too much. I also have had an upset stomach for a week, also from not sleeping though I'm sure the Advil isn't helping. It is getting to the point where I am scared to drive because I've been arriving at places and don't really remember the actual act of getting there, which is hecka scary with my kid in the car.
Now before everyone says I should sleep when Punk sleeps during the day, it's not really an option because she isn't sleeping much during the day. She took a 23 minute nap at about 8:40am and now is napping again. She slept from 11am until 11:30am and then I had to go in there and put her back to sleep because she was awake. She might sleep until noon. That's 16 minutes from now so there's no way for me to be able to have the 40+ minutes I need to actually fall asleep... let alone time to take a wake-up shower. She naps longer in the afternoons but only because I go in there every 30-40 minutes to put her back to sleep.
And no, I am not going to let her cry it out. Not right now, hopefully not ever. She is a little person who needs help to go to sleep and that is my job as her mama. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the painful and exhausting situation I am in right now. I can just hope it's a quick phase.
I am sofa king tired it is not even funny. I am used to functioning on small amounts of sleep and am not a long or thorough sleeper by any stretch of the imagination, but an average of 4 hours per night for the past two weeks is unacceptable and bordering on torture. Especially when those 4 hours (sometimes 3, sometimes 5) are not in one nice, tidy chunk but instead are in a couple of bursts, intermittent with baby wake-ups and Jen's snoring and cats that want to step all over me.
I knew going in that having a baby would mean loss of sleep, and I am okay with that. It is a short period of time in the big picture and I will get through it like everyone else does. I guess I just didn't plan on the All Night Party stage coming at the same time as the Only Mama Will Do For Sleeping stage. Punk went from sleeping from 7-6:30 with one wake-up to eat and a quick resettle by either parent to waking frequently throughout the night, needing copious amounts of settling (sometimes as long as 3 hours), and only allowing me to do this. All at once. In like one day. And I am Losing. My. Mind.
Let's take last night: we do the bedtime thing and Punk ends up finally in the crib asleep at 7:30pm. That's a little longer than usual but not terrible. She wakes up at 9 and is back down after a very quick resettle, maybe 15 minutes. I decide that I should try to get to bed early so after this, I wash the bottles and the dishes, clean the stove and the counters, make formula for the next day, and fill up the cats' water. I go to my computer to start shutting it down. It is 9:50 and I am hoping to be in bed by 10:05. Except Punk wakes up at 10. I go in to resettle and she is not having any of it. She falls asleep instantly in my arms in the rocking chair and the second I put her in the crib, she pops awake and starts thwapping her arm around. (Arm. Singular. The other is in the swaddle.) I attempt this several times until about 11 when she actually closes her eyes in the crib. Jen has already gone to sleep in the time I have been in there, even though I was supposedly going to bed early.
Five minutes later, Punk is back up and Jen asks if I am going to get her. I tell her that I am not planning to attend the All Night Party and she is going to have to have it without me. Jen goes to try to resettle the baby and after a few minutes says she is going to get a bottle. She feeds the baby and then says the baby won't go to sleep, but I wait it out and in a few minutes she is full-out howling. And Jen is upset, too. So I send Jen back to bed and I let the baby fall asleep in my arms, try to put her down... do all of that over again a couple of times and she goes back to thwapping the arm. Finally I swaddle both arms in, she falls asleep and I drop her in the crib and she stays asleep. It is 12:30am.
I then can't fall asleep because Jen is snoring, and the last time I see the clock it is 1:30am. The next time I see the clock it is 3:45am and the baby is awake and fussing. I wait a minute to see if it will escalate, and it does, so I haul myself back up and get her back into the rocking chair and get her back in the crib by 4:30am. I fall asleep probably around 5:15am and Jen's alarm goes off at 6:15am.
This has become a typical night. And it's really starting to become a problem. I have bad knees from too many years as a catcher on a baseball/softball team and they get achy when I don't get enough sleep. A couple of days ago I had to start taking Advil round-the-clock during the day because they were bothering me too much. I also have had an upset stomach for a week, also from not sleeping though I'm sure the Advil isn't helping. It is getting to the point where I am scared to drive because I've been arriving at places and don't really remember the actual act of getting there, which is hecka scary with my kid in the car.
Now before everyone says I should sleep when Punk sleeps during the day, it's not really an option because she isn't sleeping much during the day. She took a 23 minute nap at about 8:40am and now is napping again. She slept from 11am until 11:30am and then I had to go in there and put her back to sleep because she was awake. She might sleep until noon. That's 16 minutes from now so there's no way for me to be able to have the 40+ minutes I need to actually fall asleep... let alone time to take a wake-up shower. She naps longer in the afternoons but only because I go in there every 30-40 minutes to put her back to sleep.
And no, I am not going to let her cry it out. Not right now, hopefully not ever. She is a little person who needs help to go to sleep and that is my job as her mama. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the painful and exhausting situation I am in right now. I can just hope it's a quick phase.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 07:35 pm (UTC)I feel as though we take 2 steps forward and then one back. Everytime sleeping starts going well for us, she gets sick, or a tooth, or we have to go out of town. It sucks.
I can't wait to get a good night of sleep again.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 07:54 pm (UTC)One thing you might want to consider is trying naps without the swaddle. It was hard to break Emma of it but when we did and she got used to falling asleep without it she was able to settle back down easier when she woke.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 03:29 pm (UTC)