I’ve been yawning like this for hours.
I’m finally at that point where, when people annoyingly ask me, “Are they sleeping through the night yet?” which at least one person has asked literally every day for the last 15 months, I can actually respond, “Yes!” most of the time. And now I’m sleeping like crap. You know that whole sleep training movement, where you supposedly teach your baby to sleep how you want him to? Well, these babies have trained me. To be awake. All the time. Except during the day, when I can barely keep my eyes open half the time.
Whether they are awake or not, I find myself involuntarily alert at random times throughout the night no matter how tired I am, how much I want to sleep, how relaxed I feel. Although on some nights, I wake every 2 hours like clockwork, and can’t go back to sleep for at least 45 minutes. It’s now 6:34 a.m. local time. Early but not THAT early. Thing is, I’ve been WIDE AWAKE since 3:30, and I didn’t sleep much before that, either.
As I lie awake in bed, I initially start by telling myself that everything is okay, I don’t need to do anything, it’s okay to go back to sleep. If that doesn’t work, I get up and pee and have a drink of water, maybe stretch a little to relieve any tension in my body, and do boring things in bed like counting backwards from 100 in Spanish. When I was a kid, that knocked me right out. Now, no help.
Around the wide-awake-for-90-minutes mark, I start thinking about all of the things I could or should be doing since I’m obviously not sleeping. Things like laundry, vacuuming, taking down all of the curtains in the house and washing them, cleaning out the car, dusting the bookshelves… You’d think a list so boring would also lull me to sleep, but then the debate begins: Wait it out in case I fall back asleep, or get up and do something so I’m not so flipping bored.
Am I the only one with massive sleep dysfunction these days? How do you cope — either in the moment or during the day after you haven’t slept? I need ideas.
Gah! How frustrating! I totally understand, though.
Roree isn’t sleeping through the night, she wakes up several times, however, her longest stretch of sleep is from 7:30pm – 12am, and though I know I should go to sleep around the same time she does, I find that I stay awake until 12am when I have to feed her. Typically, I do SOME productive things, but honestly, most of the time, I’m reading blogs and catching up on Facebook.
I have to admit, I’m one of those annoying people who – as soon as their head hits the pillow – is OUT. However, there are times when I toss and turn – the main reason is because of my on-going To Do list in my head. Whenever this happens I try to write in my journal to get it all on paper so it isn’t bouncing around in my head – keeping me awake.
I also drink this tea before bed called Buddha Tea. It has no caffeine and is very relaxing. A little honey & fresh lemon = perfection. I also find that if I read before bed, that usually puts me to sleep too.
:)
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