Not a word with him but a jest.
And every jest but a word.

Monday, May 16, 2011

How I Got Schooled Through My Sleep Study (Part 1)

Ever since I can remember, I have had the same answer to the question "what is your favorite thing to do on the weekend?". The one thing that made me look forward to Saturdays and kept me going through the week was one word: sleep. Happily I will throw aside a morning walk, an early meeting with a friend, or even breakfast with my family if it means an extra 30 minutes or an hour of sleep. When making plans for a day off my husband will ask, "what do you want to do on your day off?" and my reply is always, "I don't care as long as I get to sleep in." I hardly saw this as a bad thing - it has always been a part of being me.


Becoming a parent has only exacerbated this desire for sleep. Catching a nap is near impossible nowadays, unless, of course, it is pretend nap with a fun ending involving my son or daughter yelling "WAKE UP!" in my face after approximately three seconds of peace and quiet. Realizing my life is hectic - many days the alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m. - I had come to the conclusion that wandering through my week in a state teetering between exhaustion and deleriousness was my new normal. Nodding off while reading my daughter a short book became common and my mental lethargy was somewhat alleviated with increasing cups of coffee every afternoon. Admittedly, it was a struggle at times to stay awake while driving to and fro between preschool pick ups and grocery store errands. "It is what it is" became my mantra, accepting the struggles but feeling them wear on my patience, my moods, and my coping skills. By Friday I was quick to snap at my children and barely able to stay awake to put the kids to bed. Small decisions overwhelmed me. Large group gatherings gave me anxiety attacks, the kind where you wish you were in a cartoon and could pull a paper out of your back pocket, unfold it into a black dot on the floor, and then jump into it...to disappear. I carried on, all the while knowing that this was no way to live.

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