To sleep

I don't know what's wrong with me.

That's not true. I do know what's wrong with me. I need to get some sleep.

I've got insomnia.

This is not a new thing for me. It's happened before. Lots of times before. I am a chronic non-sleeper. Even on my best, most restful days it can take me an hour of laying in bed before I fall asleep.

Now? Now I'm stuck in some kind of sleepless cycle that's causing my mind to become fuzzy and my body to become sluggish. I lack focus and energy. It took me ten minutes to write the last two sentences. I'll spellcheck this so that you'll never know I misspelled half the words.

The weather is not helping the situation. The gray days, the hard crust of icy snow covering everything, the icy winds that slip inside your coat and into your bones if you give them half a chance. They all make you want stay inside, curl up in a warm bed and take a nap. I want to but I can't.

I need to get some sleep.

I've tried everything and nothing is working. I had a little bit of a cold so I took some NyQuil and then remembered that they took all the good stuff out of it. I took an all natural sleep remedy and had an all natural night of tossing and turning and wanting to cry from frustration when the alarm clock went off. I took an over the counter sleep aid and then stayed up till well past three in the morning watching Nick at Night.

I remember after my aunt died my mother and all of her sisters took an all natural sleep aid to help them at night. They all thought it worked. I tried one and it didn't work for me. I finally had to go to the doctor to get something prescribed to me. Five days later the bad sleep cycle was broken. I had a few pills left over and I gave one to my mom. She took it then went to use the computer. An hour later my dad heard a strange beeping noise. He found my mom sitting at the computer desk, fast asleep. The beeping was caused by the "e" key being pressed non-stop. By her cheek. She had fallen asleep with her face firmly planted on the keyboard. I envy her sleeping like that.

I need to get some sleep.

I suppose now my only option is to go back to the doctor. I haven't though for a variety of reason. The big one is that the thought of paying for an office co-pay and prescription makes my checkbook hurt. Sleep is a right, not a luxury. I don't want to have to pay for it. Not now, not at a time when the economy makes me worry over every little purchase.

At the grocery store I pick up a bag of brown rice. $3.69? Can that be right? Can I afford that right now? I put the rice back. Later Jesse laughs at me. "Get the rice! We can afford it!" That's easy for him to say. He can sleep at night. I get the rice but put back the cans of tuna. The kids each want a box of fruit snacks and I say yes. Why should they suffer because I am so tired?

I really need to get some sleep.

Edited to add - This is partly real and partly "artistic expression". Yes, I'm tired and too cheap to go to the doctor. I'm also just throwing out something that was rolling around in my head last night. All is well and sooner or later I will sleep again.

No rest for the weary

It's been a month since we moved into this house. In that month Joseph has slept through the night one time. Once. All the other nights he's woken up multiple times screaming for us to "help" him go back to sleep. Some nights he falls back asleep quickly and we'll only have to spend a couple of minutes with him. Other nights he'll scream and cry for an hour or more.

Last night was a rough one. For two hours he yelled and screamed at me. I sat there and listened to him as he screamed that once corner of his room was too dark, that he was cold, that he was hot, that his head hurt, that he hated me, that the computer room down the hall was too dark, that his leg hurt, that I was the worst mother ever, that his nose was runny, that he wanted to read a book and on and on and on and on. Outwardly I managed to keep my cool and I spoke to him in low, soothing tones (only raising my voice once when he wouldn't stop screaming "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!" at the top of his lungs) and tried to gently convince him to go back to sleep.

On the inside though I was screaming too. "Why won't he just knock it off? Why won't he sleep? Can't he see how tired I am? Why won't he just be normal?"

We're at the end of our ropes here. During the day Joseph is cranky and hyper because he's not getting enough sleep. Jesse and I are crabby, with each other and with the kids, because we're not getting enough sleep.

I just don't know what to do. We've tried everything. Everything that should work hasn't worked. Every time someone asks "Have you tried .....?" the answer is yes, we've tried it and it didn't work. In fact, instead of getting better the situation seems to be getting worse.

I don't even know why I'm posting this. Maybe in a day or two I'll regret saying "Hey internet! Come read about how horrid my kid is and what a rotten mom I am!" Maybe not. Maybe I'm just wishing that someone out there will have a magical idea that fixes everything and lets us all get the sleep that we need.

I know I said we've tried it all but my god, what do we do here?

Can toddlers have sleeping pills?

For all my talk about not sweating the small stuff and not getting into power struggles with your kids I have to say that right now Elle is doing the one thing that drives me totally batty. She's not napping.

I've tried explaining to her that at her age she still needs to nap. I've tried letting her cry it out (well, it's more like whining it out). I've tried changing her nap to a later time of day. I've even tried snuggling her until she falls asleep. Nothing is working.

What the hell? Why won't she just fricken sleep already? Joseph stopped napping long before he turned two but that was different somehow. He seemed ready. Elle doesn't. If she doesn't nap it throws her for a loop and she's really cranky in the evening.

I've heard of kids napping into their pre-school years. Why do my kids have to be the non-napping freaks?

Experienced parents, I need your advice. How old were your kids whent hey stopped napping? What did you do when they wanted to stop? Anyone ever have success getting kids to start napping again after they thought they were ready to stop? If Elle refuses to nap would it be wrong of me to lock her out of the house for an hour or two a day so that I can still get a break?

Stop breathing!

I'm irritated. I've been wide awake since a little afer 4 this morning and I just can't go back to sleep. I know that I'm going to be tired as all get out later but for now there's nothing I can do about it. I lied in bed and tried to fall back asleep for nearly an hour but I just couldn't do it because everyone in my family is breathing too damned loud!

Aurgh! Why am I awake? Does my brain not know how badly my body needs it's sleep right now?

Oh, before I forget, I'm going to have to go back to LA again sometime in early August. I don't want to get into too much detail since this is not my baby I'm talking about here and I want to respect B and J's privacy. Basically the doctor is not totally satisfied with what he's seeing on the ultrasounds that I've been having here. So I'm going to have to go to LA to have a higher level ultrasound and a CVS (sort of an early version of an amnio) before he'll release me to the care of a regular OBGYN. I'm really not worried about and I feel pretty confident that everything will be ok. I guess it's just one more hoop to jump through in the whole process. The good news is that I'll get to spend a couple of more nights in a nice hotel. It's a little bit of a pain in the butt that I have to go back out there but if it's for the good of the baby then I'm cool with it.

Now I have to decide if I want to try to go back to sleep for another hour or so before the kids get up. Probably not. It won't work and I'll just end up even crankier. If that's possible. I can see today being a rough day.