Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.
**Anyone who thinks it’s abhorrent that a mother of two should cuss like a sailor has not been a mother of two. Or, if they have, then I just don’t know what. There are a few things in life that require cussing like nothing else: carpentry, car mechanics, sewing (for me anyway), computers, and topping my own personal list– having kids. Particularly having two kids. And don’t think I don’t see the irony in the fact that the word most called to mind is what brought the little buggers/angels into this world in the first place.**
Let me illuminate the situation. Although I was in bed for a total of seven and a half hours last night, the devil’s in the details. My longest sleep stretch was an hour and a half. Otherwise, the Babe pretty much woke me up once/hour, until 4:52 when he woke me for good. I spent another half hour trying to coerce him back into sleep, and then got up (in a typically mama-style restrained rage) at 5:25.
Fuck.
Now he’s asleep again, and I suppose I should go back to bed, but his first nap of the day is usually only 30 or 40 minutes, so I suspect it would be an excersize in complete fucking frustration. A person can only spend so long in bed not sleeping before they want to strangle someone.
Why? Why me? I thought sleep deprivation was for mamas who slept their babies in cribs? It did get this way toward the end of the Toddler’s bed sharing/night nursing days, but at four months it seems like I remember getting sleep in three hour increments… Nothing to write home about, but acceptable.
Maybe it’s just worse the second time around because I’m no longer blessed with the naive idea that it will get better as he gets older. I mean, okay, eventually it will get better. But first it will (probably) get worse. I know I’m doing it all wrong. I know I’m training him to need to nurse every little time he wakes up in the night. I saw that I had done that with the Toddler and vowed not to let that develop this time around. But here I did it again already, and I don’t know how I could have managed to do it right. The desire/need to sleep is like a goddamned rip tide.
I have tried a few nights sleeping him in his crib, because it seems he sleeps a bit better in there. I swaddle (what a sweet sounding word for a straght-jacket) him most times when I try to lay him down nowadays, and it does seem to help a ton. Anyway, his first sleep cycle is usually in the crib, from 8 to midnight. Ish. The nights when I tried at that point nursing him back to sleep and laying him back down had mixed success. He slept in longer increments, but since I had to wake so much more fully, and some of the times it took quite awhile to get him back into the crib, it balanced out to a similar baggy-eyed morning. At least this has the possibility of getting better though…? Unless that’s just more naivety.
Ooops, and now I hear the Toddler waking up I think. An hour and a half too early. Fuck.
calamity jane 
Penny for your thoughts…?