Sleep is a Pipe Dream

Sleep....it ain't happenin at our house lately. And the time change is really not helping our situation!

For the past several weeks Elliott has regressed from his "not even all that great" 4-5 hour stretches of sleep down to 1-3 hour stretches of sleep at night. One night he was up every 30-90 minutes :(  I thought things were getting better a few days ago, but he seems to be stuck at 3 hours or less. We've gone back and forth with swaddle, no swaddle, rock to sleep, put himself to sleep, binker, no binker, etc. Nothing seems to make a difference. And apparently I'm surrounded by people whos 3 month old children sleep all night. Why do I never get those?? You would think that at least 1 out of 3 would be a winner.

Wesley had a cold about 2 weeks ago and was up a lot in the night coughing. He's better now, but seems to be continuing the night waking habit every other night or so. And when he's up, it's for a good 2 hours or so. It's very annoying.

Xavier is a challenge to get to sleep initially. He doesn't fall asleep quickly and has a zillion requests (fan on, fan off, sippy, bathroom, etc) when settling down. More nights than not he does sleep all night. Unless you count last night where I was changing soaked sheets at 4:30am.

On their own, the overnights wouldn't be all that bad. But when you combine all 3 kids it's a miracle if I get one good 3 hour stretch of sleep. Poor Walter is up in the night, then trying to work all day, and go to class or do homework at night. You could take a trip to Europe for a year with the size of the bags under our eyes.

Sometimes I just laugh (in my sleepless delusion) at how many times I get out of my bed during the night to tend to someone. Here's a sample of last night:

X and Wes in bed at 7:45p. (X not asleep until 9pm.) E in bed at 8p.
I went to bed a 9:15p because I fell asleep in front of my computer.
E up at 12a. Back to sleep around 12:30a
Wes up at 2am. Walter lays on Wes' floor until 2:30a trying to get Wes back to sleep. He gives up and brings Wes into our bed. Wes spins in the bed and kicks us both until 3:30a.
E up at 3:30a. Walter takes Wes to the living room to watch a dvd.
Wes back asleep at 4a.
E back asleep at 4 am. Sleeps 10 minutes then up again. Repeat 2 times, and back asleep at 4:30a.
X up at 4:45am saying he's wet the bed. I change his sheets and get him re-settled.
E up at 5:00a
X in our room at 5:20a clearly not going back to sleep.

5:45a. We give up hope of getting any more sleep. Walter gets in the shower and I sit with X and E in our bed.
7a. X eating waffles and watching Curious George. E finally goes back to sleep. I get a shower. My mom arrives to help so I can take a nap. Yep, that's right folks, I desperately needed a nap at 7:30am. How messed up is that!!!

I did sleep 2 hours (and so did E -- little booger!)  THANK YOU MOM!!!!!

I know it's a phase and one day I'll have 3 teenagers that I will probably have drag out of bed every morning. That just seems so far away right now.

Last week, a friend of mine from a few years back watched her 4 year old son pass away after months in the hospital. Her son will never wake up again. I can't even imagine.....

So I may be tired, really tired, but that has put things into perspective for me. My kids wake up. It's a blessing I should never take for granted.