Tired

I'm exhausted. After a pregnancy, a baby who woke every night until the next pregnancy, another pregnancy, and a baby who still wakes up just about every night, I'M TIRED. I feel like a broken record because the overarching theme of every day is fatigue/tired/exhausted/want a nap/want to go bed/want my children to go to bed/want my children to stay asleep. See a recurring message here? MAMA WANT TO GO SLEEPY!

For me, the worst part is not the physical exhaustion, although that is hard to cope with. I don't like feeling like I am in a constant fog. I don't like feeling the last bit of my energy seeping out of my toes into a watery puddle on the floor. I don't like being too tired to exercise (If you've read some of my other blog posts, you know how I feel about exercise).

But the WORST part of being so tired is the emotional toll it takes. I am not an emotionally unstable person at my deepest, well-rested core. I am normally very even-keeled and easy-going. However, the key to maintaining my serenity is sleep--and lots of it. I'm a nine-hours-and-sometimes-more-than-that-a-night kind of girl. I'm a don't-even-think-about-waking-me-up-until-it's-morning kind of girl.

So after a thousand and one nights of little chunks of broken restless sleep, I'm a little irritable. Sometimes I'd like to cry, but I can't muster the energy. Sometimes I get really mad. Sometimes Dr. Jekyll competent and loving mom morphs into Mr. Hyde who wonders what to do with these kids now that she has them.

The thing that makes the ugly green monster now inside me rear its ugly head the most is, not surprisingly, when people tell me about how their (6 month old, 3 month old, 4 week old) baby is now sleeping through the night. If you are a mom who has told me your baby sleeps through the night, I still love you and bear you no ill will. However, at the moment I heard those words, I may have given you a blank stare while thinking unspeakable thoughts (something like "AaaggGGHHHH!!!!").

I know that my littlest one will eventually sleep well every night in my head, but my implosive, exhausted emotional center says "How long, Oh Lord?" Yes, I have prayed, and continue to pray that my baby will sleep. I have also laid in the bed in the middle of the night hearing a screaming baby and prayed things like "Please, just make it stop. Why are you doing this to me?" and other equally irrational things.

Oh, and until I'm past my present exhausted, emotional state, please do not tell me you know how I feel unless you have walked in my shoes (back and forth to the crib four or five times a night for innumerable nights). Going to bed late and feeling tired the next day is not the same thing. Having to get up a couple of times a night with a small baby for a couple of months is not the same thing! Being tired by your own choosing because you didn't go to bed at a reasonable time every night for months is not the same thing!!

If I seem a little extra emotional today, chalk it up to the caprices of nature. Daniel slept from 10:00 last night to 7:00 this morning, but just as I was sinking into a desperate, delightful sleep last night, an extremely loud thunderstorm began that kept me awake until after 12:30. So yes, I'M STILL TIRED!