To (NOT) sleep, perchance to dream

Written in November, but I'll go ahead and post it retroactively with an update ...

According to Shakespeare (in MacBeth, because I was an English teacher and writer and I'm geeky and know these things), "sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care." If that's the case, then sleep deprivation must tangle the hell out of it.

In case the reference is too obscure, let me simplify: sleep relieves stress. Lack of sleep creates a whole mess of stress.

I have had only an occasional good night's sleep in the last eight months--or really the last year if you count my last trimester of pregnancy (which, for anyone who doesn't know, is an exercise in constant discomfort and resulting insomnia. Meanwhile, people keep telling you to sleep now because you won't have a chance when the baby comes. Evil people.) I could say I haven't had a single good night's sleep in that time, except there have been a few nights in which my baby has taken a break from his standoff with the sandman and slept for a glorious 6 or 7 hours in a row. But it's usually just for a night or two, and then something happens to balance the sleep deprivation karmic scale: he's teething and cranky, so he wakes up often. He's sick, so he wakes up often. He's hungry, so he wakes up often. (Sense a theme?) And so we're back to Mommy drinking gallons of Diet Coke to function.

Other parents joke about it--probably to keep from crying--but sleep deprivation is hard. It's ridiculously hard. There's a reason it's used as torture--it reduces the person to a delirious, crabby and desperate puddle. It makes people certifiably nuts. And by people I mean ME.

The worst of it was in the few weeks after E was born. It got so bad that at one point, as I walked back and forth between my hospital room and the NICU (that's another story), I could have sworn I saw cats in my peripheral vision. Cats prowling the hospital halls, because of course.

It was bad.

UPDATE, February: it has improved greatly most nights--he now wakes up an average of once a night, and my husband often is the one who gets up with him. Some days now, I even feel human. Back to normal. Able to function.

But the threat of a resurgence of sleep deprivation is always there. I hear once they can climb out of their crib, it is ON.

I hope not. Sleep deprivation is hell. And I'd like my sleeve of care to be knitted, thank you very much.

And for the imaginary cats not to return.