Failure

I've been trying really hard to be positive lately. I lead a charmed life and I do appreciate it, but when the sleep deprivation worsens and I go from merely debilitated to nearly paralyzed, it's hard to see the color and joy of life. I love staying home with my kids and do not miss working. It's hard not having any external definitions of success, though. If my main role in life is that of mother, and one or more of my children is chronically miserable, doesn't that make me a failure?

My youngest, my boy twin, has spent such a huge percentage of his life crying. Screaming, more accurately. He is still, at 10 months, the worst sleeper ever, and it makes him cranky and me horrible. I just can't be nice, I can't be human, with less than 2 hours of consecutive sleep in a night and less than 6 hours total for months on end. I can't. I think those words so many times every night between 10 and 6. I can't, I can't do this any. more. It's not possible that my heart keeps beating and my lungs keep breathing when I feel like I may combust or shatter at any second. I want to be a good mother and a good person, but this is so awful.

Why is he so unhappy all the time? I dread his toddlerhood, I've suffered through his infancy, and what kind of mother feels that way? When I tell my 6 year old stories from when he was a baby, I wonder what on earth I'll tell boy twin. You were terrible? I wanted to run away from home?

Silver lining

I am on a commission (as my three year old always says) to be more positive and productive, to whine less and live more. Call it a new year's resolution, dating from my birthday instead of the actual new year. The twins are making it difficult, however, to see the good in life or have the energy to live it. It is 5:30am. I fell asleep at 12:30 and have now been up since 4, courtesy of a one-two punch of suck from my lovely offspring.

This may all sound like whining, but wait! Here's the spin I finally came up with, after much unseemly despair - isn't it amazing what the human body can withstand? I mean, I look like crap, the twins seem to have finished off the demolition my older children started on my body, I'm exhausted all the time and I can hardly finish sentences my mind has become so vague, but the fact that I'm still able to walk and talk at all is a testament to...I don't know, to something. Human resilience. The ability to live for months at a time with little rest. The fallacy of the 8 hour sleep.

Hmm, I reread that and it still doesn't sound all that positive. I may need to try anew another day. I would say tomorrow, except that it already practically is tomorrow, and I'm afraid days begun on less than 4 hours of sleep hardly ever turn out all that well.

1:56am

This is my second night making the twins go four hours between feedings. In the sober light of day (and perhaps this is why sobriety is so overrated), it made sense to say, "surely chunky 8 month olds do not need to eat every 45 minutes at night." It is in everyone's best interest for them to learn to sleep, and I have tried everything except really committing to letting them cry. I have read possibly every word in the English language ever written on making demons babies sleep, and even the theories diametrically opposed to each other agree that consistency is key.

Last night, night one, wasn't that terrible. I fed them before I went to bed at 11. Boy twin woke up at 12:10 and screamed his head off for 30 minutes and then did go back to sleep until 3, when I fed them both. His sister took her turn screaming from 4:30-5, then they both got up at 7. Not terrible. Neither twin was noticeably emaciated in the morning (sadly, neither was I, but that's another issue), and I had had two chunks of two hours of sleep, which enabled me to do puzzles with my son, clean the house a little, and make dinner. All in the same day!

I went to bed feeling foolishly optimistic. I kind of go to bed every night feeling foolishly optimistic, come to think of it - despite 244 consecutive nights of them not sleeping (that's the actual number, not an exaggeration, by the way), every night I think to myself that maybe this will be the night they realize that sleep is not out to get them, that it might be nice to have a mother they see outside visitation hours at the asylum, that there is no way in hell they need to eat again. Anyway, I had hope, because I am dumb. It must be like pregnancy amnesia - I have horrible-night-with-babies amnesia, which allows me to continue trying to survive the twins' infancy against all the evidence pointing to the unlikelihood of that survival.

I fed the little monsters darlings at 10:45 and went to bed. Because I am constantly tense from forcing myself to stay awake, I can never fall asleep quickly at bedtime (though I can nod off in seconds any other time, like while driving a car), and I fell asleep around 11:30. Boy twin started screaming at 12:45. It is now 2:13am and he's still at it, although he does take occasional 5-10 minute breaks to make sure I try to fall asleep again - it's most effective, apparently, when trying to break down your enemy emotionally, to not just keep them awake but to jerk them back up out of sleep repeatedly. Twins? The Supreme Court would like a word with you regarding the applicability of the Geneva Convention. I think I'm raising little Republicans, talk about insult to injury.

I'm going to go suffer the noise horizontally again for a while. I hate this sound more than anything - it makes my heart race and my stomach churn, I actually feel like throwing up. Why are my babies so awful???

Adrift in the land of no sleep

I'm so tired, and I never sleep, but I'm bored of never doing anything because I'm tired. Here's where the poor judgement and clumsiness and erratic behavior come in. I decide that I MUST just go on with life, and stop this futile waiting for rest that is clearly not coming, so I make plans to do normal things like a normal person - get together with friends, go grocery shopping, knit (okay, not sure normal people knit, but I like knitting). I really enjoy doing these things, but then the wall of exhaustion hits harder and earlier than usual, because I squander my extremely limited energy on behaving in a manner unbecoming to the living dead, and then I just have to collapse in a moist desperate heap of hopelessness until the next 20 minute snippet of sleep I can snatch from the clutches of my evil twins (my twins are fraternal in genes but identical in evilness)(evility?).

I keep thinking of things to do, then fizzling out when confronted with actually accomplishing anything. Examples:

1) Starting a business. I have an actual idea (rare). I have a possible company name. I started doing financial analysis. I even submitted a quote request to a hardware vendor, but they haven't responded (possibly due to my lack of an actual, real life business), and so the steam, she has worn off.
2) Actual parenting. My three year old needs a 12 step program for video game junkies, so I have been trying to distract him from his addiction by plying him with mom activities like playgrounds, puzzles, and other fun things starting with the letter P. Peanut butter? Whatever. Anyway, his focus and will far exceed my own, as is only natural given our relative levels of sleep (him: 12 hours a night. me: 20-45 minutes, 2-3 times in each 24 hour period).
3) Writing the great American novel. In my head, in the dead of night (and let me tell you, as a regular visitor to the dead of night, it truly is a morguish and unpleasant land), I think of not just ideas but whole paragraphs of elegant and compelling language that I intend to commit to paper (or pixels) ASAP - but the ideas are ephemeral as dreams (and may, in some cases, actually just BE dreams) and never make it to the writing-down stage.

I'm sure there are more, but my brain is proving my point (do I have one?) by not remembering the rest. I need sleep. And maybe chocolate.

This explains a lot

So, my Jack Nicholson-in-The-Shining phase is over (for now), and I'm moving past crazy and desperate into spring. It's March, hurray! I hate February.

The Today show (aka, my contact with the outside world) is running a series on sleep this week (see why I love them?). Yesterday, they said if you don't get enough sleep, you lose what you learned that day. At least, I think that's what they said - I didn't get enough sleep last night, and I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Actually, I haven't slept enough in about eighteen months. No wonder I feel like a dull blade these days.

In other news, I shaved my son's hair into a mohawk. The obvious question is, why does my husband let me near the children with razors? I think it turned out really cute, actually, and I'm very proud of the boy for asserting some individuality - he's spent the last couple years trying to be a herd animal.

I'm such a failure

I don't want to go on and on (again) about how awful these babies are, how horrible it is living with no sleep and no hope, but I'm realizing now that they are almost EIGHT MONTHS OLD, and I have to be doing something terribly, terribly wrong.

Yeah. I just sat here staring at the screen, trying to think anything coherent to add or clarify, but I'm out. I feel like I'm dissolving, like what's left of who I used to be is disintegrating under the pressure of never resting, and I don't like who I am and I see no way back to who I was.

I am, as my son would say, a secret spy

I think I am being conditioned, like a spy or a soldier or a mental patient, to sleep in small bursts whenever the opportunity arises and to function on levels of rest that would qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention (if the US actually recognized the Geneva Convention any more, that is). I got the nearest thing to no sleep one can get last night and was dropping by 2pm today. I got exactly 10 minutes of sleep during my abortive attempt at a nap, and now I am refreshed. Seems unlikely, but I'll take the feeling however I can.

I'm having a fun day anyway, partially because I have discovered a new online tool for helping me manipulate the numbers in my budget in a variety of ways in a futile effort to make income equal to or larger than outgo. Why it is so fun to confirm to myself over and over that we are poor, I have no idea. I do find more satisfaction in finding ways to be frugal than I ever did in blowing money on crap when I was younger and richer, which seems odd. I'm a real contradiction.

This is boring, I'm going to go try to find more stones from which to squeeze blood, I mean money. Starting with Comcast. Rat bastards charging an arm and a leg for broadband.

The lowest blow of all

Boy twin is officially getting his first tooth. I can see the bump and everything. On the one hand, it's nice to know there's a reason for his absolutely godawful horrible hideous wretched unbearable miserable beastly behavior. On the other hand, he has been screaming for most of the past 48 hours, especially the nighttime ones, and it's not as fun as it sounds. Last night, he slept between 1:30 and 6 in half hour increments, each of which was interrupted by a half hour feeding and screaming session. It's amazing how quickly no sleep ruins my whole outlook on life. This evening is shaping up to be more of the same, as he has woken up screaming exactly once an hour since going to bed.

And now, the ultimate insult - he is screaming through a new episode of House. A NEW episode. He's totally ruining my enjoyment of it, too. I'm thinking of lecturing him about how hideous my pregnancy was with him, to officially kick off the lifetime of guilt I plan on laying on his wee head.

How many teeth do kids get? This is going to be a long infancy.

Return of the Whine

You can always assume, when I don't post for a few days, that things are going well and I just don't have enough to bitch about. That has been true the past few days, but today isn't starting off well, so my material is back!

First things first - sleep! The babies have slept in their cribs for the past four nights. Now, I don't mean to imply that they didn't wake up - often even - but they're not sleeping with me, and that is a huge improvement. I sure showed those...um, inert, immobile, helpless little blobs of flesh. The real question is, how did it take me 6 months to outwit the witless? Let's not delve too deeply into that one.

Second things...second. Illness. This is the plague that keeps on giving. I felt better yesterday, just in time for my husband and my mom to go down for the count, but sometime last night it hit me again, and I am once again bound to the couch with snot and misery. My own, that is - I'm usually bound to the couch by the kids' snot and misery. At least it's variety.

This took a ridiculously long time to write. No wonder I never write anything real, and no wonder my attention span is about 3 seconds long - that's how long I go between interruptions.

What an annoying freaking day

I don't think days should be this annoying before 9am. Especially when I thought I'd be posting about how fabulous my baby twins are. My horrible sleeper, my boy who has never slept in his crib in the history of ever, slept in his crib all night. It was rough getting him down (I spent 2 hours in his room with him), but once he was down, he slept from 10-7:30 and only got up twice to eat. I sooooooooo hope that is a trend.

So, why am I so grumpy? Partly because I still feel like crap, partly because I still didn't get a ton of sleep (and I need an actual ton - I'd like to back a truck up to the sleep store and just pile it on), partly because I began the day with a peed-in bed and a misunderstanding, but mostly because of Dr. Martin Luther King. Now, don't get me wrong. I really, truly admire all he did for this country - not for one group of people but for all Americans, by exposing the elephant in the room, by showing us a better way to effect change, by starting the process (glacial though it may be at times) of changing not just people's actions but their words, thoughts, and feelings as well.

If I admire Dr. King so much, how am I blaming him for my grumpy day? Because his contribution was so large, the schools are closed today in his honor. Which means my five year old is home. Actually, he'd probably still be home anyway, as he is still snotty in every sense of the word, so maybe I'll pass on blaming Dr. King and just blame the boy directly. He is being huffy and obnoxious and whiny and oblivious to all attempts at correction or distraction and I am going to pull my hair out. Which would certainly be easier than washing it. Which I really need to do. It was a long weekend.

Also, it stinks of pee everywhere I go in this house, and since I never leave this house, I am always surrounded by the stink. The three year old has had more accidents this past week than since he potty trained, and the dog picks up where he leaves off, peeing on rugs throughout the house.

I'm sure there's more to bitch about, but I need to go lock someone in a closet. Don't call CPS yet, my #1 candidate is myself - a closet sounds like a welcome vacation.

Always two there are [...], a master and an apprentice

It is probably a testament to my unfunctioning brain that I am beginning to think almost exclusively in quotes from movies and songs. I'm sure my husband will be thrilled when he reads this and learns that he has infected me, at long last, with Star Wars. The master and apprentice quote popped into my head this morning while I was recapping the (long) night's sleep (or lack thereof). My daughter is malleable and bright - after only two days and nights of the new routine, her sleep is measurably improved. She is starting to get tired at the "right" times, is not sleeping in cat naps all evening, went to bed peacefully, and only got up once all night long. I love her. She is beauty and grace and light. My son. Well. Not as bright. Not as malleable. He was pretty much up all night again. It is so fortunate for him that he is cute and did not come with a gift receipt.

Another phrase rattling around in the wasteland of my brain is "I get by with a little help from my friends." I know I bitch a lot, but by and large I'm very happy, and I'd be utterly miserable if it weren't for the incredibly generous people in my life. I have friends checking on me every day, friends taking my big kids so they don't have to endure house arrest with me (and so I don't have to endure them enduring it), friends bringing food. A big part of the reason I can't wait to get some rest and rejoin society is so I can pay it back and (cheese alert) pay it forward. When I worked full time, I rarely came in contact with this side of human nature, this generosity of spirit, and now I live in a world of it and I'm so grateful.

Back in a minute with cute twin pictures!

I won the nap battle, but...

I was on a roll. I was firm, I was determined, I was focused like a frickin laser. The babies got up at 8 (their preference after a hard night of getting up every hour is to sleep in while I get up and take out my exhaustion on their brothers and grandmother). I kept them awake against their will until 10, when they both napped in their cribs. After they woke up, I kept them up again until 2, and again! they both napped in their cribs. I let them be for the most part after that, and they each of their own accord took a brief nap in the early evening. All signs pointed to a good night. And god. knows. We need a good night.

It is now 10:57. Girl twin fell asleep at 10. I put her in her crib. She slept for ten minutes. She screamed. I patted her. She screamed. I nursed her. She screamed. I turned on her CD. Her brother screamed downstairs. I nursed him while my husband patted her. She is now, 57 minutes later, still screaming. I hate that I hate her right now. She is small and soft and sweet and such a good baby in every other way, but the noise she's making feels like it may actually kill me. I swear, I need sleep in some deep and desperate way and it feels like if I can just express how deep and desperate the need is, somehow the universe will relent and I will get it. I keep thinking "I can't go on," but I haven't figured out an alternative, so on I keep going.

I am as tired of the self-pity as any reader must be, but I have nothing else in my head right now. Hopefully, I'll have something more promising to report in the morning.

I'll be staying in for a while...

There is just nothing like motherhood to teach you about the cost of things. Not the financial cost, although that is also brought into sharp relief once you add family members and remove breadwinners, but the fundamental truth that having one thing precludes having something else. You can't be in two places at the same time, and resources are finite. These truths may seem self-evident, but I'm still getting smacked in the face with them over and over.

Take sleep, for example (no! gasps the viewing audience, surely she's not going to talk about sleep!). My babies, you may be shocked to learn, are absolutely abysmal sleepers. I have had a heaping helping of truly good advice, using which I have devised not one but several plans, none of which I have implemented consistently. It is unsurprising to note here that I have always been a really awful dieter (hence the overstuffed upholstery look mentioned in yesterday's post). As with dieting, as soon as I see a glimmer of success I call it a day and am then simply stunned when the progress does not continue after the abandonment of the plan.

Specifically (yes, please, what in the hell are you talking about anyway?), I started putting the twins on a daytime routine a month or so ago, and it was really helping their nighttime sleep. However, putting two babies on a sleep schedule really cramps my not-so-stylish style, so as soon as I got a little bit of sleep, I resumed my regular round of friends and kids' activities and general schedule anarchy. This was (here come the excuses) exacerbated by the holidays, but I know I'd have done it anyway, because that's the self-defeating kind of person I am. So here we are, back where we started, only I'm a little more harried and desperate for a light - hell, from here I can hardly see the tunnel.

The moral of this rambling and oh-god-so-tired post is that I need to sacrifice all external activity to the sleep of the babies. I worked outside the house when my older children were babies, so I didn't really realize how restrictive it is to have to sit home essentially all day so the babies could sleep properly. So, good-bye world. I hope to see you again some day, when the babies and I are all much older and much better rested.