Sleep Deprivation, and Other Perils of Motherhood...

After three people asked me with concerned looks if I was okay late this afternoon, I packed up my things, grabbed my purse and headed home. Done.

Bleary-eyed, no focus, shaky and exhausted. I knew it was bad, but by 4:30pm apparently no smile could conceal the truth: I am sleep deprived.

For four long days I've been up literally every single hour between 10pm and 6am with a sick child. We've tried trading off to get more sleep, but even when Ben takes a turn, I still wake up at the crying and end up going in the twins' room anyway.  We've tried bringing the feverish toddler into our bed, only to have him play with my hair and say repeatedly at 3am, "I ready to get up, Mommy!"  No!! And letting him cry it out doesn't really work when there is another little person in the same room as the sickie who you hope doesn't awaken at each scuttle. And so we continued. Four nights of "sleep" (I use that word hypothetically because it really doesn't seem like sleep) in 45 minute increments. Ouch.

I feel like I'm falling apart.  My brain is mush. I can't form a complete sentence to save my life, and last night when the kid had multiple doses of antibiotics and actually rested for a good multi-hour stretch, I experienced the unfortunate misery of being too tired to drift off. Tossing and turning for hours, waking once more with the now-recovering babe and catching a brief four hours of solid sleep before a jolting alarm reminding me of an early morning event. Four hours of sleep. After four long days of no sleep. Nice correlation, eh? 

I am no stranger to sleep deprivation. Sam slept through the night at 12 weeks, but as a first time mommy I thought 12 weeks was torturous. Toby & Gabe....I still can't quite fathom how we survived as two working adults with newborn twins and a preschooler. To be perfectly honest my memories of that time live in pictures only. I have no true recollection of specific days or moments, just a foggy haze of twinfancy. And yet, we functioned. How? I do not know. God's grace, family and friends, and a lot of freaking hard work, really.

So why does it seem so tough today after less than a week of little snoozing?  

I'm not used to it. 

After having difficulty kicking some serious upper respiratory ickiness that keeps popping up over the past 6-9 months, I got the surprising news last week that my childhood allergies have worsened significantly. And I have, apparently, developed asthma. Asthma. 

I can't tell you the irony. I just signed up for two 5k races in April. I just finished a 90 Day Body by Vi Challenge (awesome stuff by the way) and hit my goal - a healthy BMI for the first time since year one of marriage. And yet, in the same week, I'm diagnosed with a chronic disease. Lovely.

Adult onset asthma can be caused by a variety of things, but a big trigger for women....pregnancy. Uh huh. Thank you twinsies for body stress and hormones. Sigh. Tomorrow I get a PFT (pulmonary function test for those of you non-breathing-challenged readers) and Thursday I go for three hour allergy testing. Joy.

Why am I falling apart? 

Every mother sacrifices for her kids. We give up peeing in peace. We give up toned tummies. We give up sleep (already covered that one). We give up hobbies and romance and free time, not entirely but a lot. We give up breathing...okay, that's a stretch but still a little true perhaps in this case...

Willingly, we give it up. Without reservation. From pregnancy to birth to years one, two, three and more...every day, counting our blessings more than the the things we give up. 

But on days like today, I must confess I crave a teeny bit of what I lost.  It doesn't mean I love my kids any less, I swear. But trudging out to my car after work, the prospect of coming home to a house of laundry, runny noses, opening bills, managing chore charts, bathtime, kitchen clean up, filling out allergist pre-appointment paperwork, and fielding a million questions from the littles...didn't sound completely wonderful. I got wistfully teary dreaming of a fictitious life where I could just collapse in bed and sleep. Really sleep.

And then I walked in the door. Smiles on every face.

"Mommy!" 

"Mommy's home!" 

"I loves you Mommy!"

Did my heart good. Three precious boys growing up too fast...so I traded my blissful evening of sleep for movie night couch-time with the kiddos before their bedtime and then mine.

I'm tired.

This mom stuff is hard, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Seriously. Not a single thing.

Even sleep.