Insomnia

Wren had his best sleep last night and I had my worst. He fell asleep at 8.30pm, woke at a bit after midnight to nurse and then slept again till 4.45am. After that he woke at 6am and was up for the day at 7am. It was a very good night for him.

But after midnight didn't go very well for me. I tried to go back to sleep but the excitement of diaper change and the night lamp not being properly covered and the bedclothes being in a mess kept me up a bit. Then I started to wonder whether Josh had put away the soup we made that I had asked him to refridgerate. He was down in the basement:

Me [at the top of the stairs]: Jo-osh
Him [out of the primordial darkness beneath]: Yes?
Me: Did you put away the soup?
Him: What soup?
Me: The soup I asked you to put away.
Him: Oh, no. Are you going to do it or should I?
Me: You do it or I'll never sleep again.

Well, I didn't sleep again till almost 3am by which time I was listening to both Wren and Josh snore and had cycled through almost all my anxieties. I worried and felt sad about the local girl who died of flu complications and that badly timed PANDEMIC FLU pamphlet from King County. I wondered again whether I would recognize the signs of myocarditis in time. I worried that I am not feeding Frost well enough and had forgotten to give him his apple before bedtime. I worried about the grunts Wren makes when he is asleep, the burning smell that passed through the living room in the evening (which Josh said was a burning bug) and then I came back to worrying that I couldn't sleep and those girls died of flu....

The dumb thing about my insomnia is that when I have it I am in denial. I think that by lying there acting asleep I will somehow fall asleep sooner so I lie there without rolling over which is completely unnatural and gets uncomfortable. Anyway, I finally entered the state of half-dreaming - dreams in which I was still trying to go to sleep but was also dreaming and was even more alarming than being awake.

I had a half-asleep dream that Frost slept swaddled and when I unwrapped him Wren had been swaddled up with him and had been squashed into one of those rubber chickens you buy at Archie McFee. Thankfully, in the dream I also looked up and saw he was okay.

I had another half-dream that I lost the diamond in my 40th birthday ring and while I found it before I sucked it up into the vacuum cleaner it kept slipping from my fingers and being lost again right before my eyes.

The last time I looked at the clock it was 2.45am and I decided not to look anymore. I am now awake in the morning and its not so bad but I have to figure out a way to wake up less and dream better and give Frost his apple before bedtime and get him to eat more vegetables and avoid getting flu.