Sleepy sleeps

It's another night of me wanting to writing something insightful and/or inspiring without actually having any insightful and/or inspiring thoughts coming to mind. And I've come to the conclusion that the nights I can barely scrape together two brain cells seem to mysteriously follow the nights of really crappy sleep.

I remember in my pre-parenting years (holy crap those were a long time ago) if I woke up once or twice during the night or got less than 7 hours of sleep I thought that I'd had a rough night. These days, 7 hours with only one interruption would feel divine.

Last night, for example, I spent about 6 hours in bed. It was at least a half hour before I got to sleep because just as I started to drift off Olivia woke to nurse and took a bit to settle back down. Then a couple of hours later she had an uncharacteristic nighttime pee and soaked through her non-nighttime diaper (Mama is behind on laundry) so Liam got a diaper and I got her changed and settled again. A little while later Lily woke up and complained that she wanted to be between Olivia and I (she's obsessed with sleeping between warm bodies but I can't for the life of me figure out how to nurse a baby who's on the other side of someone). And then a little while later she woke again and I finally told her to hop beds and snuggle with Liam, who had long since fled the bed of flailing limbs. I'm not sure if Olivia woke to nurse again after that, but I do know that her internal alarm clock of 6:30 was set and she was ready for the exciting day she had planned.

Not all nights are like this. Some are really great. Some are worse than this. And some are pretty much just like this only the complaints and the times are different.

I used to get really obsessed with trying to decipher Nick's sleep pattern disturbances. Was it teeth? Did his schedule need tweaking? Was he too hungry? Too full? Was nighttime breastfeeding causing him to wake?

Almost ten years and a couple of kids later, I've stopped getting so worked up about it. Sometimes Olivia gets into good sleeping grooves. Sometimes she goes through rough nights. Sometimes I can piece it together (such as this week's massive leap in her walking/talking/signing skills leading to the typical sleep disruptions) but I've kind of learned not to care too much because it'll all just work itself out in the end.

And so here I am, sleepy and muggy-brained for another night, knowing that if I'd gone to bed a few hours ago with the kids I'd already have some sleep under my belt but knowing full well that my few hours of solitude were worth the price of sleep.

Maybe tonight will be a good night. Good night!