Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Mr Sandman Send me a Dream

What happened to the "Hundred Days of Hell" theory anyways? You know the one - the whole sleep deprivation sucks for about three months, and then things start to work themselves out? Well people, we're on Month 8 now, and there is no rest for the weary here at Casa Earth. If you're wondering why I don't post more often - or why all my posts are pictures without text - it is because I am TOO TIRED TO THINK. I know, I know, my life is horrible....wah, wah...suck it up.

Despite the fact that the Little Guy stopped wanting to breastfeed through the night ages ago, he is still up about four times or more screaming and having to be put back to sleep. If you give him the soother and rock him in your arms, he will go back to sleep, but he may be up for twenty minutes, or he may be up for an hour or more. Mr Earth and I take turns soothing the savage beast, and it's taking it's toll. We muddle through as best we can, but how long can people survive on about four hours of (interrupted) sleep before they start to go a little nutty? I've always said that I can handle just about anything if I get a good night's sleep. I can't seem to handle ANYTHING without sleep. I'm crabby. I'm snappish. I'm mean. I don't like hanging out with me, and I can't see why anyone else would want to, either.

I know I could keep dealing with the lack of sleep, as long as there is, in fact, an end in sight. But in the wee small hours of the night, I feel like I will end up with a teenager that needs to be rocked back to sleep several times a night. He certainly feels as heavy as a teenager sometimes. And a minute can take a VERY LONG TIME when you're staring into the darkness wishing you were in the comfort of your own bed.

Can someone please remind me that this will pass? I could really use that right now.

8 comments:

SciFi Dad said...

It will pass, just not necessarily as quickly as you want it to.

My daughter was like this well past one year. She wasn't hungry, just didn't know how to self-soothe (partly our fault for never forcing her to self-soothe as an infant). She eventually figured it out; either that or she just stopped waking up through the night.

kittenpie said...

It was about month 10.5 or 11 when it started to change for us and there were only two night wakings, and then by about month 13 or 14, it was down to one. That I could handle. But I totally remember feeling around month 9 or 10 that I was about to go psychotic from lack of sleep. God, what am I wading back into?!
Good luck hon - hang tight, it'll get there.

bren j. said...

Ugh. If I lived in Toronto, I would invite you over so we could drown our sleepless sorrows in coffee. (See today's post.)

We can do it! Ra ra!

(Or something like that.)

cinnamon gurl said...

The moments when I fast forward to a whole lifetime of being woken up were/are the moments when I totally lose it. But it will pass. It will. You just don't know when. As long as you stay in the moment (I am coping right now) and don't worry about a year from now or 10, you will keep coping.

It was probably closer to 18 months when things started to improve for us.

It will pass.

Mad said...

It's time to meditate on your tag line, No-Mo.

I will pass but it is hell. Unbridled misery and damnation. I will be thinking about you.

Woman in a Window said...

For real and certain. I remember those nights! Ahhhh! It's almost unbearable. It's like torture. But I remember too that on my son's first birthday, when I believed he was sturdy enough and resilient enough, we moved him to a bedroom a little further away and resolved to let him fight it out. I stood at his door with my body buzzing to go into him and help him through his first crying fit. I stood there listening. He cried hard and then he stopped to listen. He cried again. Stoppped and listened. I guess he figured his gig was up. He laid back down and slept through the night from then on. I wondered why I hadn't done that with my daughter for the first three sleepless years of her life!

It'll pass. It gets so much better.

crazymumma said...

Yes, it passes.

You are in the hard place right now.

Anonymous said...

I know it's a couple weeks late for this comment but I wanted to chip in that I do recall 8 months being a particularly & uncharacteristically evil time for my son #1. by 9 mo he was over the drama but I spent weeks of nights humming "lullaby" (the only thing that would calm him) while singing in my head "it's a phase / it's a phase" ... and it was.

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