Adventures in sleep deprivation

I am really hesitant to write truthfully about how little we are sleeping and the effects said sleep deprivation is having on our family. For one, I really do want to have more children, but honestly I don't ever want to be reminded how hard this past month has been. I would like to be able to look back on these past few weeks a year from now with blissful nostalgia but that sort of goes out the window if I put the last few weeks into words.

Everything is relative and my life really is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. I have not forgotten that only a year ago a piece of my heart was forever broken when I had a miscarriage and that I am SO blessed to now have two beautiful children. All that being said, I am going to want to have more babies no matter what rubbish I write on this blog and a year from now I'll probably think I was just being melodramatic. At least that is what I will tell Dingle to convince him to have another baby!

Maybe I can find a little humor in the ugly truth, let's look.

As of Monday Ben is five weeks old! He has outgrown all of his newborn clothes and is wearing size 1-2 pampers. Lily didn't outgrow newborn diapers until she was 3 months old and I am fairly certain she can still fit into a newborn onsie, ok maybe not.  Like Lily, Ben has developed an awesome case of thrush. Four anti-fungal prescriptions later, he and I are hopefully on the slow road to getting rid of it. Unlike when Lily had thrush, this time it spread into my milk ducts. If you are curious as to what that feels like, imagine the worst sunburn you have ever had...on your boob. Now go slam your boob in the car door. Repeat every two hours. The medicine for his thrush comes in two forms. One is a bright sunshiny yellow liquid suspension that looks delicious (spoiler alert: it is not delicious) and has the viscosity of Elmer's glue. I suspect that this stuff would actually work better at holding elbow macaroni onto a paper plate than good old Elmer's. I have Lily working on a little something for Father's Day, we'll let you know. Anyway, Ben is not a fan of choking down 4ml of this happy looking substance four times a day. Someday I will find a way to get it off the ceiling.

The other medication is a thick yellowish cream for is "diaper region".  Ben doesn't seem to mind this one but I was less than thrilled to get some in an open cut yesterday. It burned for a surprisingly long time. He also has some crusty eye infection, which I am not convinced is bacterial, but we are putting the ointment on 3x a day for 5 days. Like the butt cream he doesn't seem to mind this one, although I imagine it blurs the limited vision he does have. Not to worry, thoughtful mommy that I am, I just push him closer to the TV.

It seems like a lot of medication for such a little guy but otherwise he is healthy. I wish I were exaggerating how little he sleeps at night however. Over the past few weeks we have tried a vast number of techniques, routines, tricks, rituals, and voodoo spells. In the wee hours of the morning I have cried, pleaded, prayed, laughed, and put in calls to the circus. For hour after mind bending hour I have shushed, swayed, burped, sung, rocked, bounced, and snuggled. And through it all Ben has slept in 15 minute blocks. Some nights are significantly better than others...this is how he gets you! On Sunday night we went back to the swaddle after a particularly rough few nights and he slept from midnight until just after 4am and then went BACK TO SLEEP from 5 to 7! I nearly died when he repeated this feat on Monday night. Fool that I am, indulged in two beers and stayed up past my 10pm bed time hanging out with my husband on Tuesday night only to have Ben refuse sleep, like it was his sole purpose in life, from midnight until 7am. Had Matt not been here to help I would have literally gotten no sleep. Thankfully he was able to take both kids for the breakfast shift (as he does most days) and I slept from 7 to 9. Is two hours really better than none, the jury is still out.

I was trying to think of a funny way to wrap up the post. Some anecdote about all of the dumb things Dingle and I have been doing as a result of such extreme sleep deprivation, but wouldn't you know it, I can't think of any. This post has taken me the better part of four hours (with LOTS of interruptions) to write as it is, so I will leave you with these crowd pleasers instead...a series of pictures in which we all try and get some sleep. Enjoy!