Mister sandman, bring me a dream.
I even took my Trazadone last night!
My family has been playing musical beds. On Monday, I had both kids in the big bed and my husband slept on the couch. Tuesday, my daughter, husband and myself were in the big bed, and son was in his room. Tonight, my daughter is in the crib, my son and husband in the big bed, and I’m on the couch. I started the night in the bed, but the chemo insomnias got the best of me and now I’m here.
At around 8:15 PM when my son was brushing his teeth, my daughter woke up. She’s been doing this a lot lately no matter how quiet we are. Maybe it’s the ear infection. Maybe it’s FOMO. Who knows. She wakes up right as my son is settling in and she is down to clown. I decide to succumb to my son’s pleas to “help” by allowing him to hold her bottle, and hold her close as we read a bedtime story. Actually we upgraded to two stories at night for my son when he was two years old. Last night, he caught on that he should read three stories because he’s three but we quickly shot that down. I see her yawning and decide to see if my husband and I can master the double bedtime. But my daughter didn’t want to go down without a fight. After about an hour of rocking, we decided to have her cry it out. She screamed bloody murder for a total of six minutes, but those six minutes felt like an eternity. We pulled our son into our bed since he was nearly asleep anyway and I didn’t want her screams to restart his whole process. We all fell asleep relatively quickly after she gave up on her attempts to climb out of her baby jail.
I woke up around midnight or so realizing I had forgotten to take out my contacts. I rarely wear contacts anymore but I wanted to wear sunglasses yesterday and my prescription sunglasses are all scratched up from living in the bottom of our beach bag for the past few years. I took out my contacts, let the dogs out, and emptied my ostomy bag.
And then I was wide awake.
I was so good yesterday. I took my morning meds AND my night time meds. Aren’t you proud mom? But it didn’t matter. Now that the chemo symptoms are gone, the corticosteroids are taking over. My superpowers are back! But one of those superpowers is super insomnia. That and being able to poop in a bag in the middle of the grocery store.
Aside: Speaking of superpowers, I’ve been thinking of writing a children’s book for quite some time. When I first learned that I would have an ostomy bag for the rest of my life, I started looking into books to explain it to my kids. Awesome Ollie has been a good one. There’s one about an octopus with an ostomy that’s pretty weird and I’m not a fan. But there were no books about parents having an ostomy. So during my post-surgery hospital stay, I thought of a title of the book and my first paragraph:
Ostomommy
All mommies have superpowers. Some mommies have eyes in the back of their head. Some mommies can smell a poopie diaper from a mile away. Some mommies have magical purses that can pull out exactly what you need. Some mommies cook delicious food, and other mommies have healing hugs and kisses that can cure any booboo. But my mommy has a unique super power. My mommy can poop wherever she is without stepping foot inside a bathroom.
That’s all I have so far, but it’s a start. Ok now back to the good stuff.
Between tonight and last night, I’ve gotten maybe six hours of sleep. I’m tired AF, but sleep keeps escaping me. After trying and failing to go to sleep, I used up all of my allocated social media time for the day. I put a few WALL·E t-shirts in my cart on my Target app and started scrolling through the Old Navy family matching section. I purchased 300 green, yellow, and white bandanas for camp field day next Friday, and then I decided to write. I figured if I hadn’t fallen asleep after three hours, I didn’t really have hope for the rest of the night.
I’ve never been great at sleeping. When I was about four years old, I would tell my parents I needed to “watch my numbers” (the Louisiana lotto numbers that came on before the 10:00 PM news) before going to bed. If my mom gave me a choice between going to sleep or time out, I would choose time out. If I couldn’t sleep my mom would tell me to pray the rosary. I remember one of my elementary school teachers told me that if you fall asleep praying the rosary, your guardian angel finishes it for you. But I never had that problem. I’d finish my rosary and still be awake.
Smart phones have made some people’s insomnia worse, but I don’t really think it’s affected mine too much. My husband and I went through about a yearlong trial of keeping our phones on the other side of the room when we slept. He slept better during that year, but I was just bored out of my mind seeing how high I could count or overthinking literally every little interaction I had that day.
I still don’t get why I’m not sleeping when I know I need it. I not only need it, but I want it too. Maybe it’s my body making up for lost me-time since lately my kids have been going to sleep the same time my husband and I do. Maybe it’s a sign that I need to up my Trazadone dosage. Maybe it’s just old habits dying hard.
I’m grateful both of my kids are such good sleepers, even if they do take a while to actually settle down and sometimes sleep in our bed. Maybe I need to adopt some of their sleep habits. We do have an extra sound machine in their closet, and it wouldn’t hurt if we invested in a set of blackout curtains for the other window in our room, though I’ve been fighting my husband on that since I like waking up to natural light. Maybe I need a bedtime story too, but I doubt my husband would read me 34 stories becuase I’m 34 if we are going by my son’s logic. Maybe I need to ditch the weighted blanket in the summer since I keep waking up sweating.
Or maybe I just need to write. I’m starting to get sleepy and I just felt myself yawn. Hopefully I can get another three hours in on the couch before waterslide day at camp. Maybe that’ll tire me out enough for the day since the 12,000 steps a day aren’t doing it.