Babies
The Attack of the Haze’s Haze
You might remember my post from six months ago describing the haze of exhaustion clouding my life, a haze caused by a certain baby boy who refused to sleep at night. I won’t name names, but his name rhymes with Drew.
Whoops. I’m too tired to think of anything that rhymes with his name. Besides, not much does rhyme with Drew except words starting with almost every letter of the alphabet.
You might also think that, because I haven’t followed up with any additional posts about The Haze, that my son has started sleeping through the night as so many wonderful, nearly one-year-old children do. Well, no offense, but if you think that then you are OUT OF YOUR MIND because my son still wakes up two-to-three times at night. I haven’t written about his nighttime stinker-ness (totally a word, more typically found in dictionaries for moms who have run out of words to describe their stinker-ish kids) because what else is there to say, really, except that I am at my wits’ end and beyond tired.
Just how tired ARE you, Candy?
Thank you for asking!
- I am SO tired that I handed the pacifier to one of the cats yesterday.
- I am SO tired that I brushed my teeth with facial cream. (My teeth have never looked more taut.)
- I am SO tired that I searched the entire kitchen, including the contents of the trash can, for the lid that goes on Skye’s apple juice, (It was on the kitchen counter.)
- I am SO tired that I haven’t had the energy to do my own laundry in months. So I just buy new underwear every time we go to Target.
- I am SO tired even my haze has its own haze at this point.
The theme of this post is subtle, I know, so I’ll make it more clear: I’m tired.
Drew goes to sleep easily. I feed him, sing to him, put him in his crib, and he rolls over and closes his eyes. Ta-freakin’-da. It’s staying asleep that seems to be the problem. He often wakes up at 9:30, midnight, 4:30 a.m. and then announces he’s ready to hang out around 6 a.m. or earlier. Some nights he’ll wake up at “only” one of those intervals, other times he’ll wake up even more. Regardless, our response is always the same: compassionate and concerned.
DREW (OVER THE MONITOR): Waaaaa!
MR. CANDY AND I: OH MY GOD, GO THE F*CK BACK TO SLEEP, KID!
I usually am the one to get Drew because I will nurse him (therein lies one of the reasons he wakes up, I know, so we’ll see what happens when I wean him over the next couple weeks), which immediately puts him back to sleep. Also, Mr. Candy maintains his incredible (read: incredibly annoying) ability to SLEEP through the cries, so I figure I might as well go since I’m already awake and boost my spirits by ripping the warm covers off Mr. Candy’s sleeping body on my way out.
We have tried most all of the suggested sleep tips, barring letting him “cry it out” (my heart isn’t strong enough to bear the cries longer than 10-15 minutes) or weaning him or playing an Al Gore podcast on repeat. He has a regular, comforting bedtime routine. We use white noise. We have covered the windows with blackout curtains. We have tried putting him to bed earlier. We have tried putting him to bed later. We have stuffed his face until milk and pasta sauce literally oozed from his pores, in hopes that a full belly would translate to a full night’s sleep. We have put him in an empty crib. We have put him in a crib with a couple of his favorite stuffed animals. The result is always the same:
DREW (OVER THE MONITOR): Waaaaa!
MR. CANDY AND I: OH MY GOD, GO THE F*CK BACK TO SLEEP, KID!
A whole year of this nonsense, people. You know what that means: If he keeps this up after he’s weaned, we’re going to have to buy a new home just to house all of my new underwear.
