I Hate The Nightlife

Once upon a time, when Ruckus was about four months old, we used the 'cry it out' method of sleep training, and lo and behold, we found ourselves sleeping around 5 to 6 hours a night.  In one stretch!  Then my husband's mother got very sick and died, and all of that sleep went right out the window as quickly as it had come.  These days, sleep is very hard to come by.  I work full time, my mother is just out of the hospital after a heart attack and triple bypass surgery, my brother is in town, and we've all been sharing The World's Worst Cold.

Last night was no exception.  I went to visit my mom at her house after working all day.  By the time I got to my own home I had been gone for nearly 12 hours.  My brother and husband were there, starving, and Ruckus greeted me with a super sweet smile that only babies can pull off without looking cheesy.

I grabbed a beer and changed out of my dress clothes, and took over baby duty for about an hour.  Then it was time to cook dinner.  I made chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and a mushroom gravy for the grownups, and mixed up some rice cereal and a bottle for the baby, and we all ate at around 8pm.  This is not an unusual hour for us to eat most days.  Life is so busy that time just seems to slip by unnoticed.

Ruckus is always pretty sleepy right after dinner, so I wrapped him in his blanket papoose style and rocked him to sleep with his bottle, and eventually, just a pacifier.  After a little while of rocking (when my back got tired) I laid him in his crib, switched on the monitor, and waited.  The first 20 minutes is always the most tense, as I sit on pins and needles to see if he will immediately wake up, or if he is going to slip into a deep sleep, giving me a break.

Last night he slipped into dreamland without a hitch.  I stayed up until about nine visiting with my brother and listening to my husband snore from three rooms away.  I crawled into bed and heard the snoring first hand.  I couldn't sleep through that, no way.  When Ruckus started crying at about 9:30, it was almost a relief.  I got up and scooped him up, gave him a bottle and then rocked him back to sleep, for what would turn out to be the first of many times that night.  When I went back to bed I purposely bumped the bed hard to wake my husband, hoping to slip into sleep before he could resume snoring.  It worked, and I fell asleep.  By now it must have been about 10:30.

11:00 rolls around and Ruckus is up again, this time to play.  He does this sometimes and gets mad when we try to rock him, wrap him in blankets, sing songs, or do anything really which impedes his freedom to play.  I was beat and after nearly an hour of fighting it, I finally threw in the towel.  I laid Ruckus in his crib and went to bed, not caring if he wanted to stay up and play but not having the energy to watch him do it any longer.  I went back to bed and by then my husband was waking up, wondering what was going on.  I tagged him in and he went to play with the baby while I went back to sleep.

Around 1:30 I woke up and they were still at it, and I just couldn't take it anymore.  I went into the nursery and wrapped Ruckus in his blanket, plugged him into the bottle and rocked him.  Ten minutes later we were all climbing into bed, desperate for what little sleep the remaining bit of night had to offer.  We all awoke another three times before 5 a.m., when I had to get up to get ready for work this morning.

Sleep training will resume in earnest this weekend, come hell or high water.  I dread the nights these days and can't keep dragging myself through each day in a fog.  My husband is showing signs of stress too, as he exists on about the same 4 hours of sleep as I do and then takes care of the baby all day while I am at work.  Ruckus only naps for about a half hour at a time during the day, so this leaves a very small window for his dad to catch any nap at all.