A Tale Of Woe

Do you have kids?  Do you remember your life before them?  Do you ever think back to those wilder, crazier times, where everything was about you and only you?  Do you miss any of it?

I don't remember too much about my early twenties - pregnancy and childbirth apparently killed off a good number of my brain cells - but I do remember going to brunch on Sundays without a care in the world, meeting friends for coffee and then deciding to take in a movie and drinks, going for long runs along the lake, road trips with my music playing.  It was a wonderful time and in my romanticized memory of it all, I recall a feeling of lightness and energy. 

But lately I have these strong waves of longing for this one particular thing I used to do all the time. 

I miss sleeping. 

Sure, I go to bed at night and close my eyes.  But its not sleeping by any means. Its just resting until the time when someone, and by someone I mean our youngest child, starts crying for me.  Note that its not an if, but a when, because her nightly siren song is something inevitable these days.  And she plays two or three gigs a night in that crib of hers.  

I long, yearn even, for the days when I used to sleep uninterrupted until 9am.  Heck, some weekends when Mark and I were DINKS (that's Dual Income No Kids, dontcha know.  Although we might just have been dinks too.  Kids make you better people, perhaps, lack of sleep and all) we slept in until lunchtime.  I used to sleep so hard I would drool all over my pillow.  Man, I miss waking up after a drooly sleep, hair plastered to my cheek, sheet lines etched into my face.  Those were some good times, my friends.  Good times. 

And now?  Now I'm crawling into bed, wonderful, delicious bed, only to be rudely awaken at midnight or two in the morning, or four, or five-thirty by a very loud and very demanding wail that goes "Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Ah! Ah!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Mam-mam-mam-mam!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah! AAAAAAAAAAH!!"  I usually jerk out of bed, and into El's room where she greets me,  two little hands white-knuckling the top of the crib, with more tears and yells until I pick her up.  Instant silence.  But don't be fooled, the silence does not mean its safe to return the package to its rightful place.  We've tried that before and its a big no no apparently for Her Ladyship.  If we thought she was loud before, that move only served to show us the full capacity of her lungs. 

So instead I end up sitting in her rocking chair, chilled to the bone, whilst my girl squishes herself tightly into me and inevitably starts pawing and pinching and patting and pulling away at my neck and arms.  To be honest, I don't love this part of the night.  What I love is drooly sleep.  Mine and hers.  What I'm getting is hyper-sensitive chaffed skin from pokey little fingers that won't stop jabbing at me.  And ice blocks for feet.  And a deep resentment for all the people out there sleeping soundly in their warm beds. 

But more often then not, the prodding and pinching slow down, finally coming to a stop, little hands rest lightly on my chest and I hear that wondrous sound of slow, steady breathing.  This is my cue to carefully raise myself up from the chair and ever so gently lay the sleeping child down into bed.  Holding of my breath to see if it takes and...yes!  I can sneak away to my own room, making sure to avoid all the creaky floorboards on the way.

I ease myself into bed, stick my ice blocks against Mark's shins and try to find some sleep myself.  Ah, here it is.  I relax into it and

"Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Ah! Ah!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah!  Mam-mam-mam-mam-!  Ah-bwah-bwah-bwah! AAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Sigh.  I miss sleep.