Searching for a Title

That appropriately conveys the massive failure of last night's sleeping experience. Perhaps:

The Words, They Were Written Too Soon

or

Jinx, Jinx, Jinx!!

or

How Life Likes to Remind You That You Still Have No Idea How to Parent

or simply

Ha Ha Ha (The Sleep Gods Laugh)

All seemed well. Finn went to sleep without any crying after I lay down with him in bed for about 10 minutes. We were anticipating a night even better than the last. We've turned a corner, he doesn't need the paci, doesn't even miss it, hurrah, we are wonderful parents!! Ha.

It's 10:30 pm. I turned off my light a few minutes earlier, way too tired to comprehend the words of the book I am reading. Sooo ready for some sleep. Then, somehow, something woke up the sleeping beast. Who, upon awakening, apparently only remembers that he has a mother and not a father, because the mantra of "mommy, mommy, moooommmmeeeee" is chanted/cried over and over again and aired over the monitor. M. goes down to settle him down. But instead of quiet, I hear lots of crying and "Nooooo" over the monitor, so it's mommy to the rescue. But it's not that simple. Because Finn is tossing and turning, playing with the damn fire truck and Thomas the Tank Engine that he somehow conned us into letting him bring to bed. Asking for water, for a snack, to watch the movie Cars. At one point, he said to me, "Mommy, I need stuff." Hopefully you get the picture here - wide awake toddler doing his best to NOT settle down.

At different points in time, whoever was in Finn's room would get totally frustrated and leave, with the child still awake. We would huddle up in bed, until the next round of cries started over the monitor, and then it was the other parent's turn to enter the fray. I gave up for good at 12:30, turning off the monitor. But M. went back down one last time, and somehow had the patience to sit with Finn until he fell asleep. He believes that he got back to our bed at around 2:00 am.

Then, Finn was awake again at 6:00 am. I raced down to his room as soon as I heard the noise (monitor was back on) just to try and buy us more time and keep him from fully waking up. I managed to comfort him back to sleep for another 45 minutes or so. The bottom line is that no one, not even the cat, got more than 3 or 4 consecutive hours of sleep. It's going to be a fun day, eh?

M. and I are both feeling a bit guilty, because we definitely lost our tempers at different points. I was just so MAD! I had been so tired, so ready to drift off the sleep. And the crappiest part was that, even when I was back in bed and off duty, I COULDN'T fall asleep. All the fuss and frustration had completely erased my sleepiness. And my sleep is precious these days! M., I'm sure, was able to sleep solidly as soon as he got back to bed at 2:00 am, and probably during some of the little jags in between wake up calls. But not me. That is the beauty of pregnancy sleep. I can usually only count, depending on when my first wake up of the night is, on 3-5 hours of solid sleep. After the first pee trip of the night, I toss and turn from then on, stealing little snatches of sleep if I'm lucky. Lots of reasons for this, of course. Increased blood flow and congestion has screwed with my nose. Combine that with the super-dry, hot air in our chimney of a bedroom, and I'm guaranteed to have at least one crusty nostril when I wake up to pee. And then I fixate on it. Even if air flow is only blocked by about 20% in one nostril, it bugs me (usually it's more, of course). I feel like I can't take a deep breath, like I'm whistling. And because it's so dry, no amount of nose blowing really takes care of it. I can't even lie propped on my back to drain anything because lying on my back makes me REALLY uncomfortable unless I'm basically sitting up. The same thing happened with Finn, too - probably something about the way I carry my babies super high, I suppose - the position of my uterus must cut off some kind of vital blood supply while I'm even semi-reclined.

If I do manage to either ignore or fix the nose problem, I spend the rest of the night trying to manage hip pain. I'm getting to the point in pregnancy where, when I flip over to give the hip I'm lying on a break, it still continues to hurt. And no amount of "pillow between the legs" helps. And soon enough, the other hip starts hurting too. So I flip from side to side, trying to get comfortable, until it's time to pee again.

All these symptoms are held at bay until my first wake up, usually some time between 2:30 and 4:30 am, and I can get solid sleep before then. Which means last night, my best hours of sleep were completely interrupted by Finn's shenanigans, and I was left with only the crappy, tossy-turny hours. Which totally pissed me off, and I'm afraid it made me have some not so pleasant feelings toward my child. I wasn't very nice to him at various points, though I did try to maintain some level of patience.

The one silver lining is that Finn, while he asked for many things, never asked for his paci (though it was clear, from how often his fingers touched his teeth/mouth, that he was missing it). And while M. was ready to give Finn the paci at around 11:30 or so, I convinced him not to. So, while the night may have been mostly sleep-free, it was also completely paci free, for better or worse.

I don't really have any tricks or tactics up my sleeve to try to help tonight go more smoothly. I guess we'll just do what we've been doing, and hope that it gets better. And for sure, I'm not writing/talking about any successes - no need to shoot myself in the foot.