AN UPSIDE DOWN ODE TO SLEEP

This morning when I got to work K. called me to say he couldn’t find his car keys, so I checked my pockets and found them in there. Luckily he had a spare, and no one’s life was deterred, but after I got off the phone, I sat there, at work, unable to stop tears from leaking all over my face. Dammit! I thought, this is ruining my much-needed concealer strategically placed to hide the purple-patched indicators of how much sleep I didn’t get the night before.

Forgetting to leave the keys on the counter isn’t that big of a deal as an isolated event, but this is on top of a week where I’m feeling like I can’t catch my breath. Do you know what I’m talking about? And for some reason, this week, it’s forgetting to do the small but really important things of life that make me really mad at myself. Small but important like how this past weekend, when we were out of town, I locked my keys in the car and had no memory of doing so. It was embarrassing, and frustrating. And this all is eventually turning me into having characteristics of a person with OCD. I have to double or triple check everything, because either I can’t remember or even if I do remember, I think I might be wrong. So I do things like go downstairs after dinner has long been over to check the stove 2-3 times to make sure I did in fact turn it off, drive back into the garage after I’ve driven out to make sure I’ve turned the light off, look through my purse over and over again to confirm that I have keys, purse, phone. I mean, which is all fine. If that’s what I gotta do, that’s what I gotta do. But I try hard to keep this up and when I forget the littlest things, it makes me feel like a big fat giant failure. Go figure.

Can I blame this on being a new mom? Maybe. Can I blame it on the fact that my mind is constantly trying to maintain several lists in my head of things I have to get done for home, work, baby, friends, family, & myself, and sometimes things slip through the cracks? Probably. But so what? I’m so lucky in that almost (almost) everything that is on my to-do lists are things that I WANT to do. And they are all things I CAN do. I’d like to think I’m realistic about trying to achieve goals/dreams/balance. But the thing is, even the best-intentioned and able-bodied need sleep.

I’m not getting a lot of it. And while it’s amazing to me that I’m up and running these days, some days, like this week, I’m running on really low fuel. So if this post doesn’t make sense, you know why.

I got sick last week – which is rare for me– and it probably had something to do with my body not being able to fight off sickness as well due to lack of sleep. Sloane had been all over the place with her sleeping schedule last week, and by the end of the week, I was feeling it in my bones. Then we went out of town, and while it was a great weekend, I definitely didn’t get enough sleep during the weekend either and by the time this week was about to start I was already feeling a little burnt out. Earlier this week, Sloane went back to sleeping through the night for about 6 hours, and K. and I gave each other figurative high-fives and got all excited about having a couple more nights of 6 hours of sleep, but we got pumped a little too soon. Last night, the baby dragon was all in an uproar, for reasons unknown and even though I decided I should start letting her cry it out once in a while, her crying wasn’t letting me go back to sleep so I selfishly brought her into bed with us, which meant all of us were able to fall asleep. We’ll try again tonight. Some nights are definitely better than others.

You know how they say if you starve yourself your body will go into preservation mode and hoard the calories you do eat? Well, I’m finding that it does that for sleep as well. Even though I was getting an hour or two more of sleep each night, I found that I was even more tired than usual. My body was all, ‘Whoa whoa, are we doing this, getting sleep now? Let’s do it up!’

If I had to dish out advice for other new moms who were going to go back to work, it would be to make sure your babe will take the bottle. If it doesn't happen, you will still survive, and it'll all be fine. But it's one of those things that would help the transition a whole lot. The other advice I have to offer is to plan a lot and pray even more. Being diligent about planning and making lists really does help. Along with planning though, make sure you pray it out. It relieves the pressure, puts things into perspective, and you learn how to ask for help.

Boy this post is all over the place. Basically, I’m just writing my feelings. This is what I do. Some people eat their feelings, run their feelings, yell their feelings… I write my feelings. If you want the thesis of this post, it's that I'm tired.

If I squeeze my eyes shut and wish really really hard for time to stop, will it?

This morning, after that long night, I woke up, pumped, nursed and changed S., and then put her down on our bed next to K. while I got myself ready for work. And she followed me with her eyes, smiling big smiles at me the whole time. Love.