The beauty of naps

Sunlight streaming through the window, as you’re stretched out on the couch. Blanket draped haphazardly around your knees, barely covering both feet, but the streaming sunlight and heater humming creates the perfect cozy warmth. There’s the dog chewing quirky on a bone on the floor, maybe piercing the silence with a sharp bark or two when the mailman drives by, but mostly it’s peaceful, quiet, afternoon lull. One forearm is draped over our eyes as we drift through dreams and stirrings.

Or there’s the blackout shade drawn tight to block the streaming sunlight. If it’s “five o clock somewhere” then it’s “bedtime somewhere” is a perfectly acceptable phrase for the overly tired. Maybe we’ll change into our jammies or sweats even if it’s only 2pm because we know we’ll wake for dinner, but maybe won’t have the strength to do much else besides nuke some leftovers. If the kiddo is drippy nosed, we’ll possibly snuggle in together for a three hour nap and wake in time to watch some cartoons and go back to bed for the night.

There’s something magical about naps that doesn’t happen in my all-night sleep. I’m rarely aware of the time, and float dreamily in and out of consciousness. The dog may bark, but I’m less inclined to yell about it, and the phone may ring and I may or may not answer. Even when I’m crunched for time, a nap feels delicious, where crunched for time in the evening makes me feel panicky and wasteful of the 6, 7, or 8 hours that my timer says are left before my alarm gets me up for the next day’s activities.

Potamus and I have been taking a lot of naps together lately. There was the barfing incident last week, and then my Friday off, where we hunkered down in the dark bedroom and slept like the dead. I haven’t woken up so refreshed in a long time. But the magic of naps is quickly used up, like the spare change you find in the couch. It’s Monday morning and no matter how many naps I took this weekend it didn’t make me less tired this morning as I drove to work. It’s difficult, the anxiety prodding me awake at all hours of the night. My bladder prodding me awake at all hours of the night. My son’s grabby little hands prodding me awake at all hours of the night. Nap-time restfulness never quite fills me up for long enough.

But those beautiful moments, when we’re sweaty and rosy cheeked after a long slumber. When we yawn and crawl out of bed to more giggles and Hotwheels cars racing down the hallway…those moments are the ones I try to hang on to. When I’m gasping for my morning cup of coffee and it’s not even 8:00 am, I try to remember the luxury I felt this weekend when I got to take the elusive mother-nap.

Parenting, like a slow march toward death

I’m exhausted ya’ll. With Boof’s new job and battling a nasty sneezy-whiny cold, and Potamus cutting teeth and battling his own sneezy-whiny cold, I have had to pick up the slack. Three days I was up at 4:30 am and still went to bed at a normal time. The sleepy-in-between-times was spent rocking and nursing and laying wide-eyed on a twin mattress on the floor. I had hoped that the weekend would bring respite, but to no avail. I ate lunch at 10:30  yesterday because I had been up for so long that it felt like lunchtime.

I don’t do well with little or crappy sleep. It’s one of the reasons I had for not having kids. Because, I’m not that nice when I’m tired. Really. I am short and have very little coping skills and a propensity to throw things across the room. Basically, when I’m tired, I turn into a VERY tall two year-old. And two year olds should not be parents. I think we can all agree to that.

So in  my melodramatic early rising this morning, while Potamus was trying to shove all of his fingers in my mouth, and pinching my sensitive neck skin, I thought to myself, ‘parenting is like a slow march to death.’ The image in my mind was the deathmarches during the Holocaust, though, even in the early-morning light I knew that my plight could never compare to those who endured the Holocaust. But still, I am tired, and there’s no end in sight for this whole crappy sleep thing, and we even talk about adding another kid to the mix in the next year or two, and it feels like I am a skeleton walking. Or a zombie, and if you get too close I will eat your brains.

I know that with a few extra hours of interupted sleep I will be back in good spirits, but that’s not looking like it will happen anytime soon. I’m trying hard to let-go and be compassionate, or at least acknowledge my own crabbiness, but it is really hard. I just want to leave all my whiny boys (scrummy included, he’s been in rare form lately, barking at everything that moves) and rent a hotel room with clean fluffy sheets and SLEEP.

Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs: A Mama’s Perspective

You don’t need to spend hours in a psychology class to hear about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The basic premise is that people need certain things in their life, and these things build on one another to get to a full, well-rounded experience of life. It’s like the food pyramid, with the basic needs being on the bottom. I like to spend my time in the top tier, but I’ve noticed that, in my time as a mom, I can not be in the top tier as often as I’d like. Not because my house is crumbling around me, or that I don’t have adequate food resources, but, because I am so freaking tired.

Seriously.

At 13+ months, Potamus is still sporty a gummy West Virginia smile. Zero teeth. None. And for the most part I’m cool with this fashion statement, but in the past few days the snot has begun running more profusely, a lowish grade fever, and CHOMPING on everything in site, which is usually his fingers, and I’ve noticed some self-induced bulimia action happening. I think, finally, he’s going to cut a tooth (or 9). I can’t quite see them all coming through, yet, but it’s the only thing to explain the bizarre crying jags at 4 am, that have kept us both up for the past 3 days (thank God I’m off today).

Because when I am tired, I am less able to be compassionate. When I am tired, and stuck at home picking up all the books that he has thrown around the room for the umpteenth time, I get cross, and forget he’s in pain and tired, too, and developmentally, tossing books is super cool. I think, if I were a better mom, I would have indoor house activities planned, but I just don’t have the energy, so I let him pull books of the shelf and toss orange slices to the dog from his high chair. Sometimes work is easier than parenthood, especially without those basic needs being met.

I’m trying to take it all in stride, as this is the first week Boof is at work, and normally we share Friday duties between the two of us. His late-home arrivals are going to be hard, but thankfully tax season is just that- a season.

 

To-Do=Ta Da!

You too could wear these beauts!

Just when I thought I was going to turn into the world’s slackeriest professor, I got my buns in gear and made a few to-do lists. And, to put things in perspective, I made a few to-done lists of things that I have already been doing, which just shows that I haven’t been on Pinterest as much as I thought (though too much for work hours, perhaps?). Working hard actually feels good, and I want to contribute to the general well-being of my students. I’m floating on cloud 9, today, after getting the opportunity to help one student get signed up for GED classes and for another student to begin processing some life experiences hindering their school performance. Being in the presence of such strong, motivated, beautiful people really is why I do this job! And much better than pushing paperwork around on my desk!

While I’m flying high in some respects, though, I am feeling a major caffeine/life-crash, which is probably due to Potamus’ new daycare germs in my mouth and hands and face from all his love-pats through the evening and night. His arms are getting longer and longer and it’s harder for me to squirm away (on our twin size mattress on the floor) when he wants to comfort himself by sticking his grubby little mitts in my mouth. My immune system is lagging, which I blame on daycare and the horrible Seattle January weather. Could it be any darker and rainier this week? I think not. The radio announcers said “sunrise will be at 7:55 this morning” on my commute and I almost groaned. 7:55? I will have been up for 3 hours+ by then, and when they say “sun up” they mean in California, because I’ve looked outside all day today and there has been no sun in sight. And if you respond to this with “yeah, but you live in Seattle,” you’ve clearly not visited us in the summer, when the birds are singing and the tourists are sweating through cheese-making tutorials at Pike’s Market.

Despite feeling less than 100%, which I’m scared to admit might become my new 100% as weariness begins settling into my bones, I have managed to keep at my Couch-5k running plan. I haven’t yet blogged about my running adventures because I’m always afraid to jinx things like this. But I am proud to say that I am halfway week 3 of the plan and so far it seems to be working at getting me in shape AND keeping me motivated to run. Because my go-to in the past went something like this: a) get the bright idea to run a 5k race, b) put on my running shoes, c) attempt to run a 5k TODAY, d) get to my mailbox, get winded, OR run for about 60 seconds down the road, get winded, walk home, e) feel like a tool for failing at something so “easy” as running a 5k (or even 1/4 of a mile), f) wake up the next morning sore and totally unmotivated to try again. Sound familiar? I’ve done silly things like that all the time, but this time it’s different. This time I’m motivated to run, but am only allowed to do it for 60 seconds, and then walk for 90. What?! The little carrot in front of me is getting closer and closer, and now I am up to 3 minutes in a row. WOO! I look ahead at week 5 or 6 and start to crap my pants (run for 28 minutes, wha?!!!), but know that it will happen in time. And the worst case is walking the 5k. It’s about DOING it, not running it faster than those Olympic runners.

In other news, Potamus is settling in to the daycare routine pretty nicely. He hasn’t been 100% himself, and it’s taking a little to adjust, though the adjustment AT daycare is going pretty well, it’s the adjustment to also going back to grandma’s that’s a little harder (more on her, than on him actually!). I’ve had Boof call and check on him at daycare, which helps me focus on work (because if I hear him crying in the background, I can’t focus and just want to run to him and snuggle him). I was expecting him to be more tired at night after a long day at daycare, but so far he’s been energetic when we get home (which is somewhat tiring for this mama!), and he’s been napping okay there, too (which I was worried that he’d nap TOO long out of overwhelm or not enough). His new favorite thing is dancing to the opening and closing credits of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Yes, I’m a terrible mom who lets my kiddo watch some TV. He LOVES the music. He dances and waves his hands in the air bollywood style and it is so stinking cute that I don’t care if it causes ADHD. He is just so happy, even when he’s been sick he still half-heartedly raises his hand and does this little shimmy when he hears his song.

Which has also led to his first word being hotdog. Because they do the “hotdog dance” and when we said hot dog, he said something like “hawtdg,” which wasn’t quite full-fledged hotdog, but so damn close we’re gonna have to count it as first real word (beside mama and dada). My baby is clearly a genius.

 

Cry it Out

When I was going through my worst bout of post-partum depression, I met with my midwife. She was kind enough to disclose that she, herself, had suffered from post-partum depression that had been made worse by her son’s terrible sleeping habits. She had pushed off the idea of sleep-training until he was 11 months old and then she had gotten into such a state of sleep deprivation, that she did 2 nights of ‘cry it out’ with her son, a total of 20 minutes each night and BOOM he was, overall, a good sleeper after that.

I thought it would never happen to me. Potamus is always held or rocked or comforted back to sleep by patting or bouncing on the exercise ball or nursing. But there has been quite a few nights lately, where he is “awake” in the middle of the night for 3-4 hours, refusing to be bounced, not interested in nursing for very long, but CLEARLY tired. While he motors around the house he rubs his eyes, whines, cries, and rubs his eyes some more.

Last night I had enough.

I have had one five hour stretch of sleep in the last 9 months, and that happened 3 days ago. The rest of the time has been spending my nights with 2-2.5 stretches at a time, because Potamus was reverse cycling. The last few days, he has been up every hour all night long. He is tired. I am tired. But I don’t want to stop bed-sharing just yet, and crying it out doesn’t seem all that conducive when the crying person is in bed with you (let alone, crying it out has triggered ideas  of abandoning babies in nurseries while they wait to be put up for adoption and are only left to be cared for by nurses).

But, at 3am this morning, I had had enough. He was clearly tired. Boof was tired, and has been pulling long hours sitting in the living room in the middle of the night so that I can try and sleep. And so, I let him lay there between us. And I patted his back. And he cried. And wailed. And cried. And I thought I was going to die, or punch the wall, or tear my hair out. Most others talk about crying-it-out in similar ways, but their babies are in cribs in other rooms and they can go to the farthest reach of the house and get away from it.

It was the longest 15 minutes. And then he was quiet, with eyes half-open, and then he rolled onto his side and snuggled up to me.

And four hours later he woke up, hungry.

I don’t know if I will keep doing it, but it seemed to work. We all got more sleep. I didn’t abandon my baby or my instincts of bed-sharing, and being right there to comfort him. And I am thankful for the midwife’s story, which somehow gave me permission last night, to be the best mom I could…and let my baby sleep.

 

But I admit, after he fell asleep, a few tears of my own were shed. I guess I had my own cry it out night…