Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Nighty night? Not so fast...

So. Tired. So. Freaking. Tired.

I read an article a couple of months ago that said that people who don't get enough sleep have a harder time losing weight. The threshold was something like seven or eight hours of sleep per night, on average.

Ha HA! I laughed so hard at that, I nearly fell of my chair. When was the last time I got seven or eight uninterrupted hours of sleep? I'll tell you. It was about a year ago. Because once I became pregnant, the All Day-All Night Ugliness set in at about five or six weeks. And that meant that I was nauseated and/or puking at night. And then, even after that lessened (read: got a little better but did not go away entirely), I had to get up and use the bathroom four or five times per night. And no, that's not an exaggeration. That lasted throughout the whole pregnancy. Then I had, you know, the baby. That was in late February, and well, here we are. No wonder I'm not able to lose the rest of this baby weight. No wonder these pounds are stubbornly clinging to my hips and stomach and waist--and well, everywhere, let's be honest--no matter how many miles I log on the treadmill at the Y. My body's too stressed from exhaustion to let go of the pounds.

Now, to be fair to Andrew, he did sleep through the night a few times. He's done it at least eight or nine times, in fact. It wasn't reliable at all. You couldn't predict it. But after a couple of rocky nights in a row, usually he'd throw in a really good night, just to keep us from completely going insane. The trouble is, he's not doing it anymore. About ten or twelve days ago, he started doing this horrible multiple-times-per-night-wakeup routine.

It goes something like this:

Andrew goes to bed in his crib, approximately 9 p.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying, approximately 12:15 p.m. [Last night, it was 11:40. But I digress.]
Jennifer or David stumbles down the hall to give him a binky and returns to bed.
Andrew wakes up again, crying, approximately 1:30 p.m.
Jennifer and/or David attempt to rebink him, which lasts approximately 20-30 minutes.
Andrew objects again, around 2 a.m.
Jennifer nurses him.
Jennifer puts him down in his crib again, around 2:20 a.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying because he's spun himself around in his crib and now his head is wedged up against the crib side, approximately 3:30 a.m.
Jennifer spins him sideways and rebinks him for good measure, then flops back into bed.
Andrew is mad again, 4:45 a.m.
David and Jennifer both wake up and hope that he stops crying on his own accord. No such luck. One of them goes in there to deal with him.
5:40 a.m.-ish, Andrew's ready to eat again. Often, he's also mad that his feet have gotten stuck in between the slats of the crib rail.
Jennifer nurses him from the comfort of her own bed, and they fall asleep together.
6 a.m. David gets up and gets in the shower.
6:10ish, William makes the first of a half-dozen entrances into the room to see if everyone's awake and ready to talk to him.
The baby stays mostly asleep until about 7 a.m., then begins wiggling incessantly.
William continues to pop in and out, slamming the door loudly after himself.
Jennifer finally gives up the ghost and stumbles downstairs for a Diet Coke, between 7:15 and 8 a.m. depending on when she has to get up anyway.

Sephora is now selling Yves St. Laurent's vaunted Touche Eclat concealer. I saw it yesterday. It might be worth the $40, frankly, to cover up these ginormous dark circles that are now taking up half my face.

Everyone keeps telling me that this, too, shall pass. Yeah, it's the mantra of all exhausted mothers of new babies. I just wish it would go ahead and pass already! I remember when William was a baby and still not sleeping through the night, and another mother told me that she dearly loved her baby, but she'd love him a lot more if she didn't have to see him so much during the middle of the night. And I knew exactly what she meant. I'm sort of feeling that way myself right now. I loooooove Andrew. Want to eat him up with a spoon. But oh, I'd love it if he'd give me a night off here and there...

3 comments:

natalie said...

This, and the incessant screaming we had from the Critter for his first six months of life, is why I'm terrified of going back for a second time. And I'm not ashamed to admit it! But you're right - it WILL pass. Just wish it would hurry up already!

Anonymous said...

Like Natalie, I feel your pain. Opie was a terrible sleeper, and I was still nursing her in the middle of the night at 16 months. I would advise you to do what we eventually did, accept your fate, and keep the baby in your bed all night, but I suspect the fact that my three-year-old still sleeps with me makes my advice more likely to be taken as a cautionary tale. Hope you get some sleep!

Emoke

Anonymous said...

Yep. This is why we slept with Graham all night until he was ~5 months old. Then we gritted our teeth (turned up our iPods) and did the "cry it out thing." MISERABLE MISERABLE MISERABLE . . . for about a week. Then, voila! (for the most part. Beach vacations aside). I'm already starting to fear/wonder whether you can do cry it out with a 4 year old in the house.