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Sleep deprivation
By ella | September 29, 2008
When I am sleep deprived I feel like a giant vacuum cleaner has sucked the air out of my immediate horizon, flattening it and taking the colour right with it too.
Sleep deprivation makes me stop returning phone calls, increasing my loneliness.
When I am chronically tired - so tired that I want to run the car off the road just so I could go to hospital for a rest - I try so hard not to take it out on the people I deal with everyday. I fail. And eventually I stop caring about whether I am taking it out on other people.
I hold back frustrated, tired tears in the doctor’s office where I go in to deal with something unrelated and see my lovely doctor holding back unshed tears in sympathy.
Six months in to this whole dealing-with-four-small-children-thing and the cracks are beginning to show. The baby is just going through an awful phase and I honestly can’t remember the last time I had more than a couple of hours uninterrupted sleep. If there was something I could do to resolve this, trust me, I would have tried it. And somehow the fact that there is nothing I can do makes it all the more hard to remember that this is just a phase and one day I will be able to go to bed without adrenalin coursing through my viens in anticipation of the long, wakeful night ahead and one day I will be able to put this baby down for two minutes and do something, anything round the house, or, more likely, sit with my head in my hands because I’ve no idea where to start.
Because I am only a short step away from really not coping.
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Categories: Sleep, All Gone Wrong
Ow - I so feel for you. I have done this too - needing to drink caffeine to stay awake and drive - and then knowing the breast feeding baby will get the caffeine and not sleep. And your husband travels a lot too. I didn’t have home schooling so I just don’t know what to suggest. Except you know darling Edward is going to get past this stage. When your hubby is home, make him pull his weight.
If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t made my bed in a week or returned phonecalls and I have just remembered an over due bill - shit.
Big hugs - hope you hang on in there - leave me a comment on mine if you want more personal e-mail on it all Ella…. take care - and it’s good to vent if nothing else.
mumof4s last blog post..Musical Monday
Ella, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Big hugs and I’m sending you an email which I hope will make you laugh when you think of it during those long sleepless nights!
I’m so sorry you’re going through this! Hang in there, I guess it can’t get much worse.
Good god - that bit where you fantasise about running your car off the road just to get the hospital rest, I met someone once who said exactly the same thing. And she said it because I was horribly sleep deprived for, like, a whole year.
If there was a way for people to nominate a mum for a free nanny or something, you’d get my vote.
Violets last blog post..There’s a war in my body and I think I’m losing it
Thanks Violet. However I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in it. Or rather, I wish I could lie in it, fir a very long time, uninterrupted…
I’m so sorry, Ella. When you mentioned that anxiety you have before heading to bed I know EXACTLY what you mean. The first year with David was just so. I should share with you some of my “lack-of-sleep” journal I kept at that time. I was trying everything and anything to get him to sleep at night. Even baby massage. Don’t bother, it doesn’t work. Hope he moves onto a more pleasant stage very soon…
Kristens last blog post..Name that picture