sleeplesses nites

I stop rubbing my daughter’s back and her breathing doesn’t change.  The nose medicine has worked, whether psychologically or physically. She’s asleep again.

5:20am.

I’m not.

My husband patted the bed too many times at 3am, to get the dog up there, and it woke me up. Usually these days, nothing and everything in particular wakes me up. I’m back in the guest room, having vacillated between being mad at him and realizing it could well have happened on its own. Damn dog. What the hell?

Damned cold.

Damned.....well, not damned, but...uncomfortable pregnancy.

I apologize again in my mind to the women I know who wish so much they were pregnant. To myself, 10 months ago, who would have given me a piece of my mind had I complained about the cycle of hunger, heartburn, asthma and now a cold. Back off, I tell her. Just because I really want this and others do too but for random reasons that have nothing to do with anything doesn’t mean I have to ignore that it is hard.

If having no vision without glasses hadn’t meant an early death on the savannah, 20,000 years ago, the birth of my first child might have well meant it. And now it is round two. My body is not made for an easy pregnancy, and maybe neither is my mind.

I watch part of a Lou Reed documentary on TV and it doesn’t manage to put me to sleep. I think about looking up some things that were mentioned in the show but then my internet seems to be down, too, everywhere but my phone. And even that may just be my cellular network getting ready to drop a huge bill in my mailbox.

I eat a banana and wonder how long before I can lay down to try sleeping again without reflux. When was my last herbal anti-runny-nose pill? I don’t want any more medicine at the same time as I just want to drop a few Sudafed Extreme Cold pills down my throat and sleep again. But I’m pregnant, and I’m not going to do that.

Morning gets another 30 minutes closer. But not sleep. I wonder how I’ll feel in an hour, when I no longer have the luxury to pretend I can get another 2 hours sleep. When Monday morning, without daycare, starts. I wonder if I’m getting depressed or just feeling the sleeplessness-induced anxiety that goes away with 2 hours’ more sleep.

Damn dog.

Damn husband.

No one’s fault. Still sucks.

Depression. Is it coming back when the baby arrives? Like some cape tied to my neck, holding me down, keeping me from standing up, always tugging downwards. Tied with some fastener that my hands can’t untie. That only pharmaceuticals can.

I won’t always feel this way - the leap of faith that a depressed person has to keep taking. Because you’ve stopped feeling that way so many times before, each time you felt like it would never change. Ignoring, or even contradicting your gut feeling that this is how it is going to be until the end. Undoing your intuition.

I’m not depressed. I’m just not looking forward to feeling exhausted soon. To wanting to sleep so badly. To wanting to cry, because how can I feel like this about something I want so much. As if one wish that I felt different might bring some tragedy that takes this away from me. It doesn’t mean I don’t want this child. I just want this to be different. I want to sleep. I want to rest. I want to be capable of work. I don’t want to start another child’s life already exhausted. I don’t want this next time to be as hard as the last.

And yet that is what, at least theoretically, I’ve signed up for. I know it could be as hard as last time.

Just some more sleep before that, and maybe I can make better decisions. Maybe I can weather it better. Maybe my family can be shielded from my brain. Maybe this time I will flip everything around and opt for a planned C-section, formula and anti-depressants from the start. I’ll control it better. And find that in trying not to be overly idealistic like last time, I’m just at the other end of the spectrum, still trying to control it all.

Am I hungry? If I don’t eat, will I lie here getting hungrier for the next 30 minutes, losing another chance at sleep, and almost guarantee that I’m a mess in the morning? Or will I fall asleep?

I wish my internet worked.

I wish my body worked, too. And my gratitude.

I guess they don’t.

I guess I’ll have to decide it is okay.

I guess this post will have to wait for me to fix the internet.

(5pm next day. Internet fixed. Sleep fixed (husband let me sleep in an extra two hours in the morning, and happy to report that I didn't lay into him about the dog and managed to just ask about it.). Still sick, but happy to be online. )