disjointed middle-of-the-night cricket update #3
and i call this one fatigue.
if you're having the opposite problem to me at the moment, and actually need help falling asleep, this post should help. it's gon be all about never being able to sleep, daydreaming about sleep, bargaining with god about sleep, and trying to snatch a few minutes sleep in the shower. strap in, because it is going to be so dull you may fall off your chair and crack your scone on the floor.
at the moment, i'm going through a period of sleep deprivation so severe it warrants a written report to (a) in the hopefully more restful future, give me pause for thought when i complain; or (b), if (a) doesn't eventuate, assist the coroner in making a finding of death by awake in my autopsy.
zadie had got herself into a pattern of sleeping 9pm-9am, waking quite precisely at 11.50pm for a last feed. and then she started teething, and waking every 30 minutes or every hour, two hours at most. baby panadol has no real effect. likewise that brauer's natural remedy stuff, and bonjela. she doesn't take a dummy. our use of the idiotic resettling "technique" we resorted to in her early days - breastfeeding to sleep - has vindicated baby-rearing experts the world over. shit is STUPID. in our defence, we originally did it because we didn't want zadie's crying to wake up rufus three times a night. i'd rather allow her to suckle for 30 seconds than do controlled crying for 45 minutes, then go through rufus's prevaricating routine of talking about why zadie was crying, drink, toilet, attempt to get into our bed, tantrum upon being foiled, singing the sleep songs etc. all this palaver would inevitably wake zadie again, and the cycle would continue ad nauseam. judge me if you will, but in these circumstances we decided to go with the feed-settle and avoid most of the drama.
they say don't introduce bottles too early to babies, in case they get nipple confusion. it's worked the other way in zadie's case. she absolutely will not take a bottle. well she's laughing now as i remain virtually imprisoned by her feeding schedule, but she's in for a rude shock when i wean her. ooh, sorry little girl! this is another parenting surprise for us, after rufus easily alternated between bottle and breast from the first week of life. then again, he also slept 12 unbroken hours from six weeks of age. after the past weeks, we'll never again take any parenting success for granted!
anyway, once i started working overnights on the cricket, it became very clear that this feed-sleep thing is a big problem. if zadie wakes up while i'm on air, joel is unable to settle her. after hundreds of tries, he has to resort to walking around the loungeroom holding her for the rest of my shift. sometimes rufus hears the commotion and comes out with his big sleepy head, and strikes my steno keyboard, confusing SBS viewers across the nation. when i finish writing, maybe at 3am or 4am or 5am, i then have to feed zadie, sometimes until 6am or 7am, and then rufus wakes for the day. or, if zadie miraculously has slept through my cricket shift, i get into bed at 4.30am and then she wakes up at 5am screaming. waking up after 30 minutes deepest sleep is worse than just staying awake in the first place.
bearing in mind we work opposing shift-work rosters around each other, and also have other commitments like playgroup, and the shopping/cleaning/administration everyone has to deal with, sleep is pretty crucial. not to mention for reasons of physical regeneration. and that has clearly been the first thing to go. my skin is dry and flaking. my joints are swollen. my milk supply is up and down. my appetite is all fucked up. i have the shakes a lot of the time, and sometimes in the night it's so bad i can't pick zadie up out of her cot. i think i am actually suffering clinical fatigue, if there is such a thing. doesn't this sound melodramatic! but what can you do, it's true. we're constantly missing appointments and playdates because i'm too tired to drive the car safely.
last night i had five hours sleep - my longest stretch in nearly a month. she popped three teeth last eve, so hopefully this is the start of a stretch of good sleeping. in the 48 hours prior to that, i'd had THREE HOURS. and in that time captioned the first one-day international (overnight australian time), and wrangled the kids for two really long days as joel was doing the rugby at work. that was the worst period i've experienced since zadie's birth, even worse than those first six weeks. i'd go through periods of constant crying (locked in the pantry, so as not to upset rufus)(and to have access to a sneaky and comforting biscuit); and then weird bursts where i felt i was on speed and did manic playing, cleaning, shopping, stuff.
i don't actually know how i am still functioning on any level. to be honest, i hardly am. you should see how bad i look. in fact you will in the photo at the end of this post :) don't even try to talk to me. i can give you nothing. i don't bother answering my phone, because i got nothing to say and i don't care to listen either. returning emails? don't think so. dude i don't even check the actual mail because i can't be bothered to get out of my pyjamas to leave the house. there's not enough concealer in my make-up bag to fill the giant suitcases under my eyes.
if zadie wasn't teething, this cricket caper would be ideal. we don't go to bed until late ordinarily, and would be up watching the cricket anyway. it's money for nothing, and free daytimes to boot. but that she's not sleeping has turned it into a nightmare from hell, and i can't wait for it to be over in a couple of weeks.
but. there are good things and i need to mention them so when i reread this, i don't smash my head through the nearest window pane.
-rufus and zadie are the most delightful progeny during daylight hours. all they do is play happily together and be generally smart and funny and well-mannered. they don't cry or tantrum. they do what i ask them. they are too fucking cute for words!
-i have the opportunity to work from home. it wouldn't be possible onsite, and i NEED to work to get a break from kid stuff.
-joel is the best partner in crime i could ever have hoped for. all he does is try to make my life easier, make me laugh, make me cups of tea, and talks ever gently to me no matter how much stupid tired shit i say. or don't, depending if i can rally the energy to form words.
it's surprising - the monotony and tedium and exhaustion of household duties that parenting can bring sharpens emotional highs and lows so acutely. i'm telling you, i know the meaning of my life. it is the feeling of joel wrapping his arm around me when i crawl into bed after three hours of non-stop screaming and baby-feeding. it is the family cuddle at 9.25pm before rufus goes to bed. it is looking these little faces smiling at me, and these little heads resting against my chest, and their little voices laughing with each other. and simply litres and litres of diet coke. yep. that's about all i need :)
p.s. rufus finally poses, and the bloody little one is trying to make a break for it. also, it would be better if most of us weren't wearing pyjamas, and collapsed on the dining room floor with its disorganised background. <3 shambolism.
if you're having the opposite problem to me at the moment, and actually need help falling asleep, this post should help. it's gon be all about never being able to sleep, daydreaming about sleep, bargaining with god about sleep, and trying to snatch a few minutes sleep in the shower. strap in, because it is going to be so dull you may fall off your chair and crack your scone on the floor.
at the moment, i'm going through a period of sleep deprivation so severe it warrants a written report to (a) in the hopefully more restful future, give me pause for thought when i complain; or (b), if (a) doesn't eventuate, assist the coroner in making a finding of death by awake in my autopsy.
zadie had got herself into a pattern of sleeping 9pm-9am, waking quite precisely at 11.50pm for a last feed. and then she started teething, and waking every 30 minutes or every hour, two hours at most. baby panadol has no real effect. likewise that brauer's natural remedy stuff, and bonjela. she doesn't take a dummy. our use of the idiotic resettling "technique" we resorted to in her early days - breastfeeding to sleep - has vindicated baby-rearing experts the world over. shit is STUPID. in our defence, we originally did it because we didn't want zadie's crying to wake up rufus three times a night. i'd rather allow her to suckle for 30 seconds than do controlled crying for 45 minutes, then go through rufus's prevaricating routine of talking about why zadie was crying, drink, toilet, attempt to get into our bed, tantrum upon being foiled, singing the sleep songs etc. all this palaver would inevitably wake zadie again, and the cycle would continue ad nauseam. judge me if you will, but in these circumstances we decided to go with the feed-settle and avoid most of the drama.
they say don't introduce bottles too early to babies, in case they get nipple confusion. it's worked the other way in zadie's case. she absolutely will not take a bottle. well she's laughing now as i remain virtually imprisoned by her feeding schedule, but she's in for a rude shock when i wean her. ooh, sorry little girl! this is another parenting surprise for us, after rufus easily alternated between bottle and breast from the first week of life. then again, he also slept 12 unbroken hours from six weeks of age. after the past weeks, we'll never again take any parenting success for granted!
anyway, once i started working overnights on the cricket, it became very clear that this feed-sleep thing is a big problem. if zadie wakes up while i'm on air, joel is unable to settle her. after hundreds of tries, he has to resort to walking around the loungeroom holding her for the rest of my shift. sometimes rufus hears the commotion and comes out with his big sleepy head, and strikes my steno keyboard, confusing SBS viewers across the nation. when i finish writing, maybe at 3am or 4am or 5am, i then have to feed zadie, sometimes until 6am or 7am, and then rufus wakes for the day. or, if zadie miraculously has slept through my cricket shift, i get into bed at 4.30am and then she wakes up at 5am screaming. waking up after 30 minutes deepest sleep is worse than just staying awake in the first place.
bearing in mind we work opposing shift-work rosters around each other, and also have other commitments like playgroup, and the shopping/cleaning/administration everyone has to deal with, sleep is pretty crucial. not to mention for reasons of physical regeneration. and that has clearly been the first thing to go. my skin is dry and flaking. my joints are swollen. my milk supply is up and down. my appetite is all fucked up. i have the shakes a lot of the time, and sometimes in the night it's so bad i can't pick zadie up out of her cot. i think i am actually suffering clinical fatigue, if there is such a thing. doesn't this sound melodramatic! but what can you do, it's true. we're constantly missing appointments and playdates because i'm too tired to drive the car safely.
last night i had five hours sleep - my longest stretch in nearly a month. she popped three teeth last eve, so hopefully this is the start of a stretch of good sleeping. in the 48 hours prior to that, i'd had THREE HOURS. and in that time captioned the first one-day international (overnight australian time), and wrangled the kids for two really long days as joel was doing the rugby at work. that was the worst period i've experienced since zadie's birth, even worse than those first six weeks. i'd go through periods of constant crying (locked in the pantry, so as not to upset rufus)(and to have access to a sneaky and comforting biscuit); and then weird bursts where i felt i was on speed and did manic playing, cleaning, shopping, stuff.
i don't actually know how i am still functioning on any level. to be honest, i hardly am. you should see how bad i look. in fact you will in the photo at the end of this post :) don't even try to talk to me. i can give you nothing. i don't bother answering my phone, because i got nothing to say and i don't care to listen either. returning emails? don't think so. dude i don't even check the actual mail because i can't be bothered to get out of my pyjamas to leave the house. there's not enough concealer in my make-up bag to fill the giant suitcases under my eyes.
if zadie wasn't teething, this cricket caper would be ideal. we don't go to bed until late ordinarily, and would be up watching the cricket anyway. it's money for nothing, and free daytimes to boot. but that she's not sleeping has turned it into a nightmare from hell, and i can't wait for it to be over in a couple of weeks.
but. there are good things and i need to mention them so when i reread this, i don't smash my head through the nearest window pane.
-rufus and zadie are the most delightful progeny during daylight hours. all they do is play happily together and be generally smart and funny and well-mannered. they don't cry or tantrum. they do what i ask them. they are too fucking cute for words!
-i have the opportunity to work from home. it wouldn't be possible onsite, and i NEED to work to get a break from kid stuff.
-joel is the best partner in crime i could ever have hoped for. all he does is try to make my life easier, make me laugh, make me cups of tea, and talks ever gently to me no matter how much stupid tired shit i say. or don't, depending if i can rally the energy to form words.
it's surprising - the monotony and tedium and exhaustion of household duties that parenting can bring sharpens emotional highs and lows so acutely. i'm telling you, i know the meaning of my life. it is the feeling of joel wrapping his arm around me when i crawl into bed after three hours of non-stop screaming and baby-feeding. it is the family cuddle at 9.25pm before rufus goes to bed. it is looking these little faces smiling at me, and these little heads resting against my chest, and their little voices laughing with each other. and simply litres and litres of diet coke. yep. that's about all i need :)
p.s. rufus finally poses, and the bloody little one is trying to make a break for it. also, it would be better if most of us weren't wearing pyjamas, and collapsed on the dining room floor with its disorganised background. <3 shambolism.