Cup O' Joe

Elly is back on the sucky sleeping schedule again.  I swear that kid goes through sleeping phases like people go through fad diets.  (I don't diet, I just eat cookies.  Lots and lots of cookies!)

What does that mean for me other than my own sleepless nights?  It means my new health insurance company thinks I'm an insomniac for one.   I took a health assessment test for a $35 gift card to be used for medical expenses.  (Why the hell wouldn't I answer 100 questions about me for $35 free? Duh!) It asked how many hours of sleep I get a night, how rested do I feel when I get up for the day, and so on. 

What it doesn't allow for during the questionnaire is a place for you to fill in any kind of explanation behind it.  Like if I was a meth-head and was tweaking every night then of course I wouldn't get any sleep.  (But at least I'd get all the laundry done!)

But what about parents of insomniac kids?  There's no box to check for that.  So instead, I'll now get spammed with a million emails about how not sleeping enough has a poor effect on my health.  No shit.  Now if only there was enough time for a mommy nap time in a day and this wouldn't be a problem.

But yesterday afternoon was the icing on the cake for just how sleepless I've been the last few nights.  At work, I have a Keurig in my "office."  (I say "office" and not office because it's only got three walls and no door, so people can still come in my space willy-nilly whenever they feel like it.  Plus, since I'm a natural loud talker, they can hear pretty much everything I say.)  I drink a lot of coffee and the Keurig gets quite the daily workout. 

It was time for my afternoon cup o' joe pick-me-up.  And as I plopped the little k-cup in and watched the coffee stream into my cup, I realized I needed to up the ante a bit.  So I pulled out the canister of mocha cappuccino mix from the drawer and added a few scoops of that to the coffee for the extra jolt I was going to need to re-read the same story five times for copy edit mistakes.  (I lead a glamorous life!)  

As my coffee finished brewing I started searching for the blue lid to the canister so I could clean up and get on with my afternoon.  But alas, I couldn't find the lid!  (Mind you, the entire coffee making process was done from the comfort of my desk chair.  I didn't move more than 12 inches during the entire process to make this cup of coffee.  How the hell I misplaced the lid I have no idea.)  And as I'm standing up, spinning in circles, cursing myself for being crazy and not able to find the blue lid (I even checked my pockets!) a lady I'd never met before but needed to introduce myself to (and make a good first impression for because I'd be working with her lots in the future) walked in and saw me turning in circles on my own little crazy train.  My entire conversation with her was distracted by the fact that I couldn't find the blue lid to this damn canister!!! 

Finally, as I tried to shoo her away so she wouldn't see how crazy I was, I just got down on the floor and started digging under a cabinet in my "office."  And alas!  I finally found the lid... a GOLD lid.  Why I swore it was blue, I have no idea.  

Clearly, I not only needed my afternoon cup o' joe, but I needed to add another scoop of cappuccino mix to it.  Because my little insomniac is making me crazy!!!!   

Shoot Me Now

Yup, just go ahead and shoot me now.  I won't mind.  I'll even write you a permission slip to the cops saying it was totally ok and I actually asked for it.  Because honestly, I'm so sleep deprived right now, I'd sign off on just about anything! (Except Stoofy buying a boat.  I'd probably kill him if that happened.)

The problem is that Elly no longer sleeps.  And when I say no sleep, I mean screams for an hour at a time throughout the night a couple times a night, every night.

And she doesn't really nap.  And when I say she doesn't nap, I mean she takes three 20 minute naps a day, tops.  If I'm super lucky, every now and then, she'll sleep (in my arms because the moment I put her down she wakes up wailing) about 40 minutes.  But those days are rare.

I don't get it.  This has been going on for about a month and half.  She was like this before moving, so I don't feel like it's because of the move.  She has the same routine every day, I am a pretty routine girl myself.  She's been trying a few new foods here and there, but she's enjoying them and her system seems to be processing them just fine. (Output is working just as well as her input!)

She has the exact same bed time routine at the exact same time every night.  At 7:00 PM she gets a bath, rocks together with either mom or dad and gets a bottle.  She sometimes drifts off with no problems, sometimes it's torture. 

And then the hell begins.  She'll sleep for a couple hours, then wakes up with night-terrors.  (Or whatever the baby equivalent is to night terrors.)  She startles herself awake and just starts SCREAMING!!!!

It's flat out awful.  Because there's absolutely nothing that will stop the crying.  She's not hungry, she isn't sick.  She just doesn't want to sleep.  I give her teething tablets for any pain, if she's got a fever from teething, I give her baby Tylenol.  Nothing seems to work.

It kills me to no end that she doesn't sleep.  Not only do Stoofy and I not sleep, it kills me that she doesn't either.  But what kills me even more is that she wakes up early and is always chipper.  Like a cartoon chipmunk chipper. 

She's laughing and smiling and it's like nothing happened.  I kind of think a gremlin takes over her body after 6:00 PM every night, and then evades her body by 6:00 AM.  I really can't think of any other explanation because baby night-terrors sounds even more farfetched. 

I mean, what the hell could cause a nightmare for a baby?  Flashbacks to birth? What else could there be?  And at what point do you even start dreaming in life?  And if she's dreaming, what is she dreaming of?  It's not like she knows what the lottery is, so she can't dream about winning it the way that I do.  So I just don't get it. 

Just like I don't get any sleep.  It's time to start stocking up on coffee for mumma and baby Unisom for Elly.  (That's a joke, I'm not actually drugging my child... unless someone finds a legal loophole of course.  Like I said, I'd sign off on just about anything right now.)