sleep, or lack there of

My barely conscious brain decided that this post was necessary around 4:30 am.  4:30 was the 4th time I was awakened after going to sleep last night.  Before I get into all of the reasons I feel like a zombie right now, I will say that this is a common occurrence these days, and I don't really mind, but I do feel the need to document it!  And I honestly don't mind, I am happy to do anything that my babies need me to do, I know how incredibly blessed I am that I have two extremely healthy, happy, content, loving boys.  Timmy is clearly a very smart, social, athletic little guy and Tyler is on track to become the same, right behind him.  I am so blessed and I am acutely aware of that, even after nights like last night.  But still, while I am happy to meet their needs at all hours, I am also very much looking forward to when their needs come mostly during sunlit hours...

Disclaimer over, here come the details of a typical night for me:

Tyler puts himself to sleep anywhere between eight and eleven most nights.  He sucks his thumb to signal for his bottle if he's hungry, otherwise he rubs his eyes and fusses until you put him down in his crib, he prefers it to being cuddled to sleep!  On the rare night that I am ready to go to bed before he is, I simply put him in his crib and he goes to sleep.  He has never "cried it out" he just goes to sleep.  There is no crying... until he wakes up!  He goes from passed out to screaming at the top of his lungs in an instant!  I always try to top him off before he goes to sleep to make sure he's as full as possible.  I have tried cereal right before bed, we have put cereal in the last bottle of the night, it doesn't really do much in keeping him full longer.  On the nights that he goes to bed around 8, I can expect him to be up at 11:30, 2:30 and 5:30.  I change his diaper, feed him, and put him back in his crib, and he's good for the next 3 hours.  No, he does not eat that regularly during the day.

Timmy is more of a wild card.  He is much harder to put to bed, he wants me to lay with him for much longer then I am willing to stay.  Most nights he stays put and just calls for me a couple times after I leave, and I tell him through the monitor to go to sleep.  Recently he has discovered that if he wakes up in the middle of the night he can sneak into our bed.  With all of the other interruptions to my sleep I just don't have it in me to go put him back in his bed.  Which is a mistake, obviously.  It tells him it's okay for him to do it, and it means he is tossing and turning and waking me up the rest of the night anyways!  He probably sleeps through the night 90% of the time though.  I have the biggest problem when they team up on me!

Which brings us to last night.  Tyler went to bed around 10, but was not at all interested in a bottle before bed.  Timmy was a nightmare to put to sleep, he called for me and called for me and as soon as we thought he had given up and gone to sleep, our door opened up.  This happened several times.  He and I were finally asleep before 11.  Tyler woke up to eat at 11:30.  Tim was still awake so he took care of that feeding for me.  Tyler woke up the next time at 2.  Tim was still awake and said he would take care of him, but he also said there was no way Tyler needed to eat again.  So, he was letting him cry.  My blood pressure is going up right now just thinking about his crying last night, not that it was extreme or Tim let it go on that long, it just happens immediately.  

(Side story - I have been aware of my blood pressure since Timmy was born.  I had high blood pressure at the end of his pregnancy that left me on bed rest, luckily it went back to normal as soon as he was born.  But, during one of the routine checks by the nurse it was suddenly high again, when I asked her about it she said, "your baby is crying, of course it's high."  Ever since then I can literally feel when it is raising, whether it's because Timmy is too wound up to listen to directions or when the first ear piercing scream of Tyler's alerts me that he's awake.)

Tim went in to get Tyler, calmed him down, changed his diaper, held him for a few moments, and put him back in his crib.  No bottle.  This really surprised me, I had been assuming that if he was waking up the only reason could be that he was hungry, especially because he doesn't try to play or anything else.  Everyone went back to sleep.  At 3 my door opened, Timmy had the sweetest smile on his face, but I firmly said, "let's go back to your room."  He had a big story for me that didn't register, but I'm pretty sure he was just alerting me that he had just gone pee.  I praised him, pulled the cover over him, and walked out of his room.  I was ecstatic when he quietly went back to sleep.  At 4:30 when Tyler woke up, he was frantically sucking his thumb, I changed him and fed him and put him back to sleep.  I was very happy when Tim's alarm did NOT start going off around 5:30 like usual, even though we were all running a little late this morning since he got up with my alarm at 6:30.  If Timmy hadn't had school today, I might have let us all sleep in!

I guess since I've had two C-Sections these years of sleep deprivation can be my form of mother's guilt!