Sunday, August 7, 2011

My preciousssss

Sleep.

I love sleep. Always have. Laying (lying?) down and relaxing on crisp cotton sheets in hot weather, or cuddling under flannel and a warm comforter in winter, what a great feeling.That lovely feeling of stretching out and relaxing. Mmmmm.

Then I had kids. Although they were all pretty accommodating and slept through the night by 6 weeks old, it still meant I had to get up early but that was okay, I just went to sleep earlier. No problemo.
 
Until I went back to work and ended up on second shift, finishing up anywhere from 11pm to 1:30 am.  And had to get 4 kids up and out for the bus before 7. My firmly held belief that once I was up, I was up for good crumbled and vanished. I learned to wake children, make lunches, find homework and watch for the bus without being fully awake and falling back to sleep as soon as they were out the door. By the time just the younger two were left in high school, I was taking a prescription for fibromyalgia that helped me sleep without waking every hour or so, and I told them that they had to get themselves up and out- which they did, thank-you-very-much.

J and I worked out differences in waking methods- he liked using the radio as an alarm, and snoozing for 10 minutes. I hated the country music waking me after 2 hours of sleep. He learned to use the buzzer instead and I used my pillow to block the light. It killed him when I would sleep until 10 on his days off- it killed me when he 'tiptoed' in to get a shirt and accidentally woke me up at 8. 

I recently changed meds to one that gives me a lot more energy during the day and coincidentally gives me insomnia, just at the same time that I started work again. Having to go to sleep when it's light out doesn't help. The good news is that J and I are both getting up at the same time on the days I work. The bad news is we go to bed at the same time.

J is hot. I mean, literally. It's like being in bed with a radiant heater. I'm pretty much over hot flashes, but if I get too close, I can feel my temperature rising. He takes this personally, and I don't like to hurt his feelings, but pretty soon I have to start flapping sheets and hanging my feet out the side of the bed. And that's scary- you don't have your foot out there unprotected at night- everyone knows that.

The end result is that I crave my precious sleep, nine hours is perfect, but I can make do with eight. But what's even better is when I wake up myself, no help from anyone or anything, no dreams being rudely interrupted.  No kids, no dog, no man, no phone, just let me wake up on my own.  We got back yesterday from a  trip to RI, and I reminded J to let me sleep this morning- he agreed.

I woke up first and turning over, popped the poor man right in the nose!

Sorry, honey, you must have been too close.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I love sleeping too! My babies were not nearly as accommodating as yours were, my first didn't sleep through the night until she was nearly 5 years old. But now that they are older and can get up on their own, it is heaven! :)

Captain Dumbass said...

Why is it that you can't get the kids out of bed during the week and then when the weekend rolls around they're out of bed at 6am?

Wendy said...

So basically, what you're telling me is that it doesn't get any better? Ha! I'm in trouble!