Saturday, January 27, 2018

Be Gentle

Some days are just rough ones.  This day was one of them.  I have never known exhaustion to the level that I do now as a parent.  There must be a word for what happens when you have only had like five complete REM cycles in the past seven (plus the end of my pregnancy where I was up and uncomfortable all of the time) months.

The look of our bed throughout the night; often one or more babies , post-bottle catching the sweet sleep we so so are longing for.
For the most part we have had luck with babies who are willing to fall asleep without too much pomp and circumstance.  We bathe, read, eat and then they are generally conked by 8/8:30pm, with us following quickly behind.  We have been testing this with staying up little bits later here and there, sometimes reading, sometimes playing a stupid phone game, sometimes even watching an episode or maybe just half, of television.  I know this daring of time to bite us in the face would come back to get us one of these nights, and last night it did.

We had a highly stimulating day yesterday, traveling to Pittsburgh to participate in the Women's March.  I was thrilled to see my godmother, who is a badass queen of a lady who had not yet met the boys, so it was like a combination of all of my favorite things and people.  There were quite a crew of marchers for the walk downtown from the Courthouse to Market Square.  Lots of noise, speeches, cheering and booing to keep the fellas up when they might otherwise be napping.  That paired with being off our normal eating routine, I think built up a perfect storm of sleeplessness that they later rained down on all of us.

We saw them by chance crossing the street amongst hundreds of people, because the world is awesome sometimes.
It started with Baby B at 11pm, quickly followed by Baby A.  Normally when both boys are fed, we are able to slip them back into cribs for at least some chunk of the evening-not last night.  The guys were not having anything to do with sleeping by themselves, however, they were not pleased with their positioning in our bed and felt quite comfortable to vocalize their frustration through screams.

Had this been a Friday or Saturday night, I might have not been as brittle and frustrated as I was on a Sunday night going into a long stressful work week.  The PPD/PPA rears its ugly, scary-images head when I feel weak and tired and worn thin.  I made a hurtful comment to my wonderful husband that I deeply regret, causing him frustration and sadness which I never want, because he is in this 100%.  We are both slogging through the ups and downs of double-baby parenting together and he is there for me over and beyond anything I could have imagined.

I followed up my rough outlook on humanity at school having little to no patients with me kiddos.  Granted they bring their own baggage to the table that is exhausting emotionally and mentally, but if parenthood, especially the unglamorous, not-so fun side of parenting and working on the least amount of rest as possible branch of parenthood has taught me anything it is to take care of each other.  Be kind and gentle because we are each fragile and raw and working through this unpredictable stage working with the tools we have and are capable of summoning.  We don't always have the right words or the strength to make the best choices, but we can at least acknowledge that we are doing the best we can with what we are given to manage at any given moment.  So be gentle, show more grace and understanding and patience, and give hugs and listen because there are so many feelings in this business and Swiss cheese, non sleep brain just jumbles them up and makes everyone feel worse than they already do.  And when someone offers to watch one or both or all of your children for the evening or afternoon so you can catch some zzzz's, take it; you never know when you will get your next eight hours.  Happy resting.

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