Sleepless Nights
Before Ellie was born people would say things like “enjoy your sleep while you can” and I always thought they meant I wouldn’t get sleep with a baby because the baby would keep me awake. LIARS! Or maybe I misunderstood them? Ellie sleeps like a champ at night (she’s not a big fan of naps though). She usually goes to bed between 8-9 and sleeps till 9-10 the next morning. I feed her throughout the night but she sleeps right through it. The problem with sleeping though is that I can’t sleep for some reason. It takes me hours and hours to fall asleep and on those nights I sleep very poorly. Waking up a lot for no reason, and generally feeling unrested. My best explanation is something hormonal because I do all the things to get a good nights sleep. Going to bed at a good hour, doing calming things before bedtime, and being generally pretty tired. I find it hard to believe I can be training for a half ironman, running two businesses, keeping up with friends, and keeping a baby alive and still not be tired enough to sleep at night. Like I feel tired in my body but my mind just won’t shut off. I’ve wondered, at times, if this is what it is like to be manic. You do an insane amount of things and your brain is still refusing to let you be still and rest. So, yes, I was very wrong about the reason for not sleeping but the result is the same. No sleep.
I could start using these nights to document some things about Ellie’s time with us so far. She’s almost 7 months old. She’s just starting to attempt crawling. I think she’s a few days away from getting it down. She’ll get up on her hands and knees, make a few rocking motions and then either face plant or her knees slide out and she’s kinda froggy legging. She doesn’t have any teeth yet. People keep saying “oh wow she’s putting everything in her mouth and chomping on it, she must be teething.” But she’s been doing that for months and still no teeth. She’s starting to eat more solid foods. So far, she’s tried everything we’ve put in front of her. I think right now her favorite seems to be pickles and sauce packets (like applesauce). This last week she’s figured out how to suck down the sauce pouches. On Saturday she had two whole pouches. Drew says she’s graduated from pooping to shitting. In the last week or so she’s decided she doesn’t really want to be nursed and cuddled to sleep. She’ll nurse, and then decide she’s done, pop her binks in her mouth and then refuse to nap. Usually that means she’s exhausted at bed time and falls right asleep though. It’s sure made me feel completely helpless at naptime though. My magic boobs don’t work to put her to sleep anymore! I recognize that it’s probably a help in the long run for her to have other methods of going to sleep other then nursing.
Emotionally I still feel disconnected. I’ve definitely reached a point of fiercely wanting to protect her, but I don’t feel that elated feeling of life changing love that everyone talks about. I guess we’re still working on that although i don’t really know what that means.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. I have more sleep to not get to.
