The Problem With Insomnia

I’ve had insomnia my entire life. My mom says she had to stay up with 1 a.m. with me as a baby. Any other bedtime, and I’d wake up every fifteen minutes. Put me to bed at 1 a.m. and I’d sleep all night. In middle school, it was at it’s worst, and I would easily be awake until about 5 a.m., sleep two hours and then get up, get ready for school and go on with life as if I hadn’t been up all night. Every single day.

While it’s gotten better with age, and extremely better since having Sawyer to tire me out all day, I still have to fight to fall asleep each night. There are nine million thoughts battling for attention in my mind, all wanting some kind of clarity and time. Take tonight, for example. I am 35 weeks and two days pregnant. I am tired so much during the day, rarely get a nap, and yet cannot fall asleep at night. Train of thought for the night- how in the world am I going to handle having two kids and no husband around? (Yes, I know plenty of women do it, but I’m sure they were worried about it too). Brandon leaves for a four month long army commitment almost exactly a month after my due date. I will have a two year old and a one month old to take care of all by myself. Reality is, we’ll make it and be just fine, but I know it will not be easy, and at midnight, those four months seems impossible, especially if this baby is anything like his brother.

While I realize, and am hoping that every baby is different, I don’t know how to expect any kind of first few months than the kind I had with Sawyer. It was hard. He had colic, and cried/fussed most of the day, every day. His colic was so bad, that he couldn’t finishing nursing without stopping to cry for a few minutes and then continuing on. It was four months before he slept for more than a half hour straight. I remember the day clearly, he was asleep in the bouncer, and I was trying to sneak in a nap on the couch while Brandon worked on school work. I jumped awake after about forty minutes, and when I realized it had been forty minutes, I was sure something was wrong if he was still asleep. I got up, checked on him, relaxed when I saw he was fine, and then Brandon and I both sat and stared at him as he slept. Partially in awe of him sleeping, partially just enjoying a rare moment where he was happy and relaxed. I felt so bad for Sawyer in those months; he was so helpless and in so much pain, and we did everything we could do. The hours of walking, rocking, singing, praying, and crying, I don’t know how I could do it again. It was hard, and I have been a little scared this entire pregnancy that this baby will be the same way.

Back to midnight. I lay awake worrying that I won’t be able to do the newborn stage again. That I won’t be able to do all of that work again and missing sleep again, especially with Sawyer around. I don’t want him to feel neglected. So what do I do? There’s no one to talk to at 1 a.m., so I turn to my solution for everything- I Google it, which then leads me down this train of searches from “bringing home baby #2” to “chances of having two with colic” and other related searches. I found plenty of blogs and parenting websites which affirmed my fears, or often made them worse, and this is the problem with insomnia. Leave a person with worried thoughts alone late at night, add the internet, and you find nine million other problems you didn’t know you had, but now you need to research those too. The beauty of the internet though, is sometimes you find something great. I ran across one bloggers amazing heartfelt post, and finally was able to quiet my mind.

Kate’s post about adding baby #2 immediately made me feel better; I found someone who I related to, who I trusted even though we’ve never met or talked, and live in completely different parts of the country but her post helped me get my mind straight and remember what is important in life. I soaked in the words on her blog, that post, and others, like a sponge, and now am feeling so much more confident and able. Yay for being able to connect with others through the internet and be helped by others stories, because they often calm my fears and help me get my head straight. I hope that this blog will be one people can relate to, and not just make your worries worse and keep you from falling asleep. Maybe it will just be post like this are so long you get bored and fall asleep, and if that’s the case, than you’re welcome. I’m glad I could help in some way 🙂