Sleepless in San Diego

No one slept last night.

We’ve had the flu and now Isolde has it and she has a fever of 103, and so she can’t sleep. We went to sleep at 11, and Isolde woke up and started crying at 11:22. For those counting, we got 22 minutes of sleep. Then Elowyn got up and turned her light on in her room and decided to lay down on the floor with her butt in the air.

Having kids is like trying to use a buggy program. It just does random things for no apparent reason and then you have to figure it out, like, “oh, ok, I wasn’t expecting to clean pomegranate seeds out of my recliner when I sat down to read, but I guess this is what I’m doing now.”

At midnight we tried to give her baby Tylenol to help bring down her fever and let her get some sleep. Instead, she fought it and finally when we got a drop down, she projectile vomited hot, stinky, chunky milk all over me and our bed. So I handed the bile blaster to Lara and got in the shower, with lumps of puke falling off me and into the carpet on the way to the bathroom. That shower was a highly reflective experience.

At 12:30 AM, after completely changing the sheets and the mattress cover (because it soaked through everything) I quietly contemplated the wisdom of having more children.

Isolde finally slept but then started crying from about 4 AM on. Lara was walking the floor with her, she’d calm down a little but as soon as Lara went to put her to sleep, she’d start crying again. Finally she started really wailing and I got up to check to see what was happening and I found Lara sitting in front of the crib holding Elowyn in her arms, while Isolde stood in the crib bawling her head off. So Lara took Elowyn back to her room and I picked up Isolde and just got in bed with her. Lara has the patience to pace the floor with them for hours, I don’t lol.

So I held her and got in bed and lay down and gave her snuggles. She started wailing as soon as I got in bed, so I put my shooting earplugs in, which are a life saver, believe me. They don’t drown out everything, but when someone is screaming right in your ear, it can really take the edge off. I held her and comforted her and gave her tickles, but she was still fighting it. She likes you to stand up when you’re holding her; for some reason sitting down or–God forbid, lying down–is totally unacceptable. But she was so tired she was falling over while she was crying, and finally she just leaned over on me and passed out. That was at 5:30 and by that point I couldn’t fall asleep again, but I got a good hour’s worth of cuddles with her.

Thankfully from around 1-4 I did get a little sleep. It’s incredible what happens when you get a full REM cycle of sleep in. When your sleep doesn’t get interrupted, and when you sleep a full 90 minutes or even 180 minutes undisturbed, and you wake up naturally to go to the bathroom or roll over or whatever. You feel so refreshed, rejuvenated, it’s such a marked contrast to the feeling of waking up in the middle of your sleep cycle to crying or some kind of emergency. I think these girls have really aged me lol, but I’ll pay them back when they get older, just you wait.