Sleep, who needs it?

                  My youngest baby is 7 months old.  Usually, by this time my babies are sleeping soundly through the night (something that has always annoyed many of my friends).  But this little guy just doesn't want to sleep more than 3 or 4 ours at a time!  I think there are a combination of factors contributing to our little problem: I haven't been as diligent scheduling him as I was with the others and allow him to nurse all the time; we are so much busier than we have ever been; the 8 of us live in a two-bedroom house and by default he is still our roommate.  Or maybe he doesn't think he gets enough attention during the day so he figures if he keeps me up at night we'll get more quality time (not a bad survival technique for a sixth man).  

               After more than a week of waking up every 2 or 3 hours I found myself less than cheerful.  That's actually a huge understatement, I have been grumpy and mean and depressed, unmotivated and overwhelmed.  I started thinking postpartum depression was hitting me really late, next I convinced myself I was pregnant again, which I of course obsessed about until 2 pregnancy tests assured me that was not the case.  Then I had a night where I got 7 glorious uninterrupted hours of sleep!  Suddenly, the world was a better place, I was kind again, everything looked better, sounded better, smelled better!

              This got me thinking: Everything is better when you are sleeping; allow me to give a few examples:


                   Screaming Toddlers Fighting Over Every. Little. Thing.
With Sleep:  You gently diffuse the situation, distract, encourage or join in the play and quietly teach them to play together. It drives you crazy but you find yourself praying through the frustration and getting past the moment.

Without Sleep: You unsuccessfully resist the urge to join in the yelling; you rip toys out of hands and threaten to throw every toy they own in the trash, or you lock yourself in the bathroom just to gain enough composure to go back and deal with the situation in a way that will not inspire your neighbors to call CPS.

                   Dirty Dishes, Piles of Laundry, Dirty Floors
With Sleep: You tackle a little at a time throughout the day, finding you have energy to approach each task with cheerfulness, and can even leave a few tasks undone in order to play with the children. You come up with games to get the kids involved and at the end of the night it doesn't look so bad; it's not clean but it's livable.

Without Sleep: You cuss at your husband in your head for not helping you more (even though you know he helps a lot); you scrutinize over every piece of laundry convinced that your kids threw it in the hamper without even wearing it; you feel like a complete failure and convince yourself that your kids will grow up needing countless hours of therapy, and be clinically diagnosed with OCD as a reaction to what a pig sty their house was growing up.

                    Natural Family Planning (Your Sex Life)
With Sleep: You thank God for the beautiful gift of marital love; you marvel at how kind and good it is of God to give you a cycle you can track and you feel optimism when you think about your future with all the kids God wants to give you.  You find you don't recoil when your husband touches you, and you think about how much better sex gets the longer you are married.

Without Sleep: You get dressed as fast as possible, in the bathroom or closet, making sure your husband doesn't see you naked because even though you can't imagine he could find you attractive right now you're pretty sure he would want to have sex if he saw you.  Your husband looks at you with that familiar glance and you want to scream "you want part of me too! All I want is to watch TV or read a book without someone needing something from me for five minutes!" You can't make heads or tails of your stupid cycle and you cry thinking about the possibility of having another baby and resolve that the only sure way to avoid this is to never  have sex  again.

                    Body Image

With Sleep: You're never completely happy with the way you look, but you feel good about the progress you're making losing the baby weight, or maintaining the weight you are.  You are making good food choices and working out and you figure you're doing your best and your'e grateful for your health.  You look at your stomach knowing it will never again regain it's former glory but thank God that your children are the reason it looks the way it does, and you know it was totally worth it.  

Without Sleep: You cry every time you have to put something on that doesn't have an elastic waist and imagine how much happier you were before these little creatures completely destroyed your body (even though you know all you could think about was how much happier marriage and family would make you and you didn't care if it meant you couldn't be skinny anymore).  You figure you're going to be fat forever, and will probably just get pregnant again in 5 minutes so you might as well eat that third brownie, or make the really cheesy enchiladas for dinner again because somehow the smell of them in your kitchen makes you feel better. You compare yourself to every other woman you know and convince yourself that you are the only one who really needs to lose weight and that God must hate you because you have the metabolism of an 80 year old. 

I think I've made my point.  So for all the sleep deprived mothers out there, know you are not alone and for God's sake go take a nap!