Even Alyce Tells Me I Look Tired

This is not a blog about sleep, but it is a blog about my life. So here we are: I'm exhausted and you get to read about it.

Shira's night sleeping is all over the place. We had made the decision to sleep-train her (nursing her only once through the night), and things were going well. She was making it until around 1:30 or 2:00 before nursing, and then waking up every hour or so until 6:00. I would let her yell and cry each of those times, but not get her out of bed (keeping in mind that Shira is sleeping in our room, so not jumping out of bed to make the yelling stop takes a lot of restraint).

Before I continue, I realize that there are many people who don't agree with any kind of sleep-training or crying it out during the night. I think people should do what works for their family. What is best for our family is that Shira and I get some sleep, plain and simple. I realize, however, that not everyone is with me on this, and to this end I was blown away by the comments I read last week on a blog post over at Strollerderby. Holy cow, those are some mean comments. Parenting can be really challenging some days, so let's not make it worse for ourselves. Yikes.

Anyway, back to me.

Matt went out of town for two nights and all hell broke loose. We don't have a baby monitor (forgotten in Canada on our last trip), so I needed to leave all the doors open between my room and Alyce's room. My little wisp of a light sleeper woke up at Shira's first stirring and began sobbing in her bed, make Shira quiet, Mama. What could I do? Say no that little voice? Hardly.

So Shira quickly realized that she had a free pass to nurse anytime she wanted. What's that, Mama? You don't want me to breastfeed again? Ok, then, I'll just yell really loudly. I wonder if that will wake up Alyce... So we went from progress to waking up ever hour, all night long. After nine months of not getting enough sleep, I became a zombie. I was that kind of tired that I stopped driving for a few days. If you had been looking for someone to drive a forklift last week, I would have had to turn you down (as much as I want to help). Instead I stayed home and did the following:

-Hit my head on the corner of the cupboard.

-Hit my head on my fridge.

-Walked into a different cupboard door.

-Invited a friend of Matt's over for dinner and instead of baking the the mushroom tart on parchment paper, I grabbed the waxed paper. The smoke of the melting wax made the rest of the house smell, well, like melting wax. We ordered pizza.

-That same night I was baking my new favourite chocolate dessert and I couldn't for the life of me find the stick of butter I'd taken out of the fridge. Only after ten laps of the kitchen did I discover that I had placed it on the table in front of our dinner guest, in another room. Poor thing thought I was serving butter for dinner.

Matt returned home, finally, and sent me for some extra naps this weekend. Life looked sweeter by Sunday. Shira is back to nursing once a night and keeping me up from 3:00-6:00. Baby steps. Exhausted, sleepy, stumbling baby steps.