The Universe is preparing me…

I think the universe has taken it on it’s own head and decided it needs to prepare me for sleepless nights to come. Which is ever so nice of it, except that I have done the newborn thing once before, and had two of them at the same time, so I do remember what it is like to be a little tired…. I guess I am not convinced I need preparing but it seems the universe has other ideas…

Last night started off well… I was tired after dragging us all out of bed at a reasonable hour yesterday morning to get to Library story time early enough to get a car park and a decent spot to sit. (Oh yes you have to plan well in advance for story time!). So I fell into bed and watched Brothers and Sisters while I dozed off. The Baldy Boy woke me as he came to be some time later.. telling me that Izzy ‘only loves Mummy’ but he thought he’d gotten her back to sleep anyway. He was wrong.

About half an hour later I got up to Izzy. She wanted a drink and a cuddle and did indeed confirm that she ‘only loves mummy and not daddy’. After that revelation she lay down and told me I could go back to bed – oh so gracious of her – so I did. I lay in bed for a while listening to the Baldy Boy snoring and trying to find some way to lie that would stop the Child Within from tap dancing. It wasn’t long though before Izzy needed me again.

This time she wanted the story CD back on… ok no probs. I decided since I was up I’d have a toilet break and maybe avoid it waking me up in the next three hours. Oh how optimistic I was that I’d actually get to go to sleep now.

I lay in bed again… listening to the snoring symphony, the Child Within was restless but I was working hard at switching off from both those things and finding sleep. I let my mind wander.. though it wandered back to the snoring. I wondered if his snoring was doing him any damage… maybe he has sleep apnoea, I wondered how much better he might feel if he slept without making all that noise, I wondered if he might need a c-pap machine then hoped not cause I was pretty sure I couldn’t sleep with that right next to me and this house isn’t big enough for him or me to sleep anywhere else. Then I thought about how we will cope when we add a baby to our bedroom, then what stuff I still wanted to buy/organise before the baby was born. Then I wondered if I was hungry. Then I thought about some scrapping and design stuff…. Then I must have dozed off.

But it didn’t last long.. suddenly I was awake again when a bloody millipede dropped on my head! I have gotten much better in dealing with these rude awakenings than the first episode from some weeks back but I still need to turn the light on and make sure the creepy little thing is out of my bed. I also do tend to lie there and wonder about how many more might be crawling up the wall above my head ready to drop onto me as I sleep… uuughhh!

Then Izzy called out again… See this is the problem of letting the girls falls asleep on the couch watching Myth Busters with Daddy. It seems like a good idea at the time as you get out of reading stories and the argument about who chooses the CD, but Izzy never sleeps well when she falls asleep in the couch. I am sure she wakes confused because she hasn’t gone through the right steps before bed time…. so more drink, a different story CD and I went back to bed.

More tap dancing, more snoring, more mind wandering. At least I was resigned to it rather than stressing about it being almost 2am and still having had hardly any sleep.

Dozing again I dreamt about aliens leaving glow in the dark seed pods all over our back fence (I know… weird!) then Izzy called out again. Came back from dealing with her and had a nasty shock! I was sure I could see something glowing in the folds of the doona on our bed… maybe the aliens were not a dream after all! I was very brave though.. I reached in and pulled out a plastic tiger with green and blue glow sticks coiled all around it that some lovely child must have left in our bed the previous morning…. have to admit I did think I was going nuts there for a minute!

I hadn’t disposed of the alien seed pod and been back in bed for more than a few moments when I heard little feet. She normally doesn’t get out of bed in the night time (they both just call out for us to come) but she appeared at the side of my bed and I peeled back the doona so she could climb in. Within seconds she was asleep… my arm was being drooled on and I had lost all feeling in my hand, but she was asleep. About 30 minutes later I decided I’d do real damage to my hand if I let it go without blood much longer and hauled myself out of bed, and carried her back to her own bed… she didn’t move and thankfully that was the last I heard from her.

I made yet another toilet break, gave the Child Within strict instructions to be still just for a little while and went back to bed to ponder the snoring patterns of the Baldy Boy once more… thankfully small children, millipedes and alien seed pods all left me alone and I slept like a log the rest of the night!