Thursday, August 21, 2008

I'm Wide Awake-It's Midnight

I have no idea what is wrong with me, for the past two nights I can't seem to fall asleep and then I wake up the next morning still tired and dreaming of naps all day long only to find myself tossing and turning after dark. I even went to bed 'early' tonight but after 90 minutes of tossing and turning here I am, wide awake. Bailey just woke up for a bottle and I decided that there was no point in lying in bed wide awake when I could be reading disappointing follow-up novels by Stephanie Meyer's or better yet, blogging.

In an attempt to drift off to sleep tonight I found myself reading old journal entries, yes world, I keep and have kept a diary for over 15 years. I get worse with it as I get older and now with the blog I hardly ever write and it is boring enough to put even me to sleep but it is an interesting tool of self discovery. I find that the way I remember things and the way I write things when they are happening are very different.

Take for instance what I read over tonight. I won't bore you with the word for word translation but I was reading an entry from when the twins were two weeks old. (I am anal I suppose, I write the date on every entry followed by how old the twins are, I used to write the date followed by how long we had been trying to conceive and then the date and how far along in my pregnancy I was, I find it to be a useful tool when I wish to quickly and accurately go back in time.) Anyways, I can't get over how sleep deprived I was and how fowl a mood I was in. I wouldn't call in PPD or anything but it saddens me to think that I spent anytime, yet alone weeks so tired after their arrival. I always thought the newborn stage would be hard but I thought that it would be the best time of my life. I hate to admit it, but to be completely honest, it doesn't appear that it was the best time of my life. The thing is that isn't how I remember it now. I remember it going quickly and time flying by but I don't remember any pain, sadness or exhaustion. I think it's best that I can't remember it that way and almost sad that I wrote any of it down to be reminded of how difficult a time it was. I am so disappointed that those early weeks were so difficult, I felt so alone and had such a bad case of cabin fever. It could have been the season and the lack of vitamin D in my diet but it is depressing to read and I hope I didn't rub off on people that way. Now I love being at home and I don't even like to go out unless Ward, Ricky or Lucy are with me (*you know we really should be Ricky and Lucy and they should be I don't know Fred and Ethel, I have never even seen an episode of Leave it to Beaver).

I want to have more children because well, I can't really explain it other than I just do, but I hope that next time I will be better prepared. That I will know that the exhaustion passes quickly but so does the newborn stage and I won't take it for granted like I fear that I did this time. I am making it my new mission statement to revel in all the time I have with our children, both good and bad, because before I know it we have left one stage and headed to the next, before I realize it, before I am ready.

But the whole sleep deprivation, it is so underrated. I wonder how many people laughed to themselves but in my direction when I told them that I wasn't worried about the lack of sleep because I wasn't sleeping in late pregnancy anyways, I mean who am I kidding, I have the water logged crossword puzzles to prove that I was sleeping in late pregnancy. Who knows maybe it's my fault, I mean I did poke and prod my stomach at 3a.m. in the bathtub trying to make the twins move for me so they were but only use to late night rendez vous with mom when they were born.

-june

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