My quality of life has drastically improved now that Chase has passed his sleep regression stage. He has returned to sleeping 12 hours with an 8 hour stretch and waking one or two times a night for a feed, after which he happily returns to dreamland. In celebration of this, I decided to reward myself with a little extra mommy time by staying up late to watch some TV and surf the net. Of course, Murphy’s Law, this is the night he ends up waking every two hours again all night long.
Since I had lots of time to recuperate and catch up on sleep, I found it to be nothing more than a minor annoyance and I had the ability to make it through the night. The hard part was making it through the day after missing out on an early bedtime and never really making it into a deep rejuvenating slumber. As a result of his interrupted sleep, the lo was over tired and unable to nap properly throughout the day so I never really caught a break from the continuous whining. On top of that we had two changes of clothes, a diaper leak and we got up, got ready and left the house at 8:30am to attend a medical appointment that was actually scheduled for another day!
I was in a terrible mood at this point and for some reason everyone I crossed paths with was in an over-the-top good mood! “It’s a beautiful day to have to get up early isn’t it?”, the security guard at the medical clinic said after I shared my frustration about the mix up.
“Well what a cute bundle of joy you have there!”, said the cashier at Winners who caught Chase in his only 2 minutes of happiness for the day.
I think I was somewhere between stage 2 and stage 3 sleep deprivation because, typically being the eternal optimist and the one who can overcome life’s biggest obstacles with the power of positive, I was ready to throw up all over their sunshine and rainbows. What got me through the day was knowing that I got to escape to a feast of Chinese food, wine and girl talk with my best friend once Stephen got home.
I surprised myself a little, and this goes back to the whole stage 2 sleep deprivation thing… usually if I miss putting Chase to bed I take special care to ensure everything is laid out. I pull the blinds, turn on the night-light, adjust the temperature, lay out PJ’s and a diaper and make sure there is a bottle prepared in the fridge. Doing this just makes it a little easier to get out the door knowing my wee one would be comfortable and that Stephen has what he needs to have a good night with him. This time I didn’t touch a thing and I ran out that door so fast I left both their heads spinning. In fact, the milk was still frozen in the fridge and when Stephen asked me how he should prepare it, I told him to look it up on the internet! Of course Stephen made out just fine and Chase was sleeping like and angel when I got home.
So there are a few things I can pull from this experience:
- Never get too comfortable with your baby’s sleep habits
- Late nights just aren’t worth it anymore…unless of course you know you have hubby home the next day to help out and give you a chance to nap
- Lashing out on random cashiers is NOT productive
- There is really no need for me to take on the extra responsibility and effort in preparing everything before I catch a break, I need to just let it go and trust that my husband has it under control
- There is nothing better than a nice glass of wine in good adult company after a rough day
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