Sleep...argh.

It seems I have forgotten how to sleep. Before there were babies in my life I slept fine (well kind of). Right before school would start I could not sleep because I was excited for the new year. I guess it was the before school jitters. I had 'em just like a kid. Sometimes when I was depressed or if I could not stand my job (like when I worked at Washington Township, and they said that I smelled...but that is a whole other blog/story) I could not sleep. In fact when I was working at Township teaching that last year I went to a healer to help me through those last few months.

Nothing prepared me for the lack of sleep that would occur after I gave birth. The adrenaline must have kicked in, or perhaps it was all the friggin nurses knocking on my door for my pressure or whatever, but I did not sleep in the hospital. I mean I was wired. When I got home the lack of sleep thing continued. I probably only slept for a few hours. Oh, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I had twins, nothing at all. When I would try to sleep I'd get a song in my head. I still cannot hear "No one" by Alicia Keys or P. Diddy's, "Every Breathe You Take"; that shit was on rewind and play in my head for nights. It was truly hell. It was almost as if I was trying to conquer sleep. I swear no one tells you about that shit. Baby blues is way too nice and sing song for the cluster fuck that happens to women after they give birth. Baby blues my ass...

When I asked my doc about what the hell was happening to me he just said, "the harder they come, the harder they fall". My response was, "Isn't that a friggin Grateful Dead song? Fuck". Well, I did not really say fuck, but I thought it, a lot.

Erik got me sleepy bath salts at Kohl Linscomb (a fabulous fancy place to get amazing beauty products) and some lavender lemon grass serenity tea. I did deep breathing, gave myself Reiki...all the Zen shit I could think of. Sleep would not come. I got to the point where I had to tell the night nurse to bottle feed Maya and Amara, so I could get some rest (which became another kind of hell afterwards when they had nipple confusion).

Ever since then I have had problems sleeping. Sometimes, when I try to go to sleep, I cannot stop thinking, even if it is just stupid shit like what I am going to do the next day. I toss and turn violently. Erik says it is because I try to hard. He thinks by trying to sleep I simply cannot. I just need to let go (an ongoing theme in my life)

Poor Erik does not get to sleep either. Sometimes I wake him up to hold me because I think I am going crazy. It gets to the point where I actually contemplate smashing my head against the wall, but that would wake the babies up...no, but really, it truly sucks.

A few months ago I started to go to acupuncture for it. The doc, who I love, thought that maybe it was my hormones or the severe upheaval and change of having two children at once. I think he was just being nice. The acupuncture has helped kind of. Now, I go to sleep easily, but instead I wake up at 2 in the morning and go through the whole tossing and turning thing.

What I hate the most about it is that I know what I have to do. I should take a bath, drink some herbal tea, and try to relax before bed, or maybe I should drink a bottle of vino and just pass the hell out...The doc says I need to have some place to process my thoughts. I think too much, but I have ALWAYS thought too much. It never seemed to be a problem before (at least not when it came to sleep). Anyhow, I continue to go through phases with this whole lack of sleep thing. It could be weeks, then boom, no sleep. I think I get scared of what happened after I gave birth. I am frightened of loosing it, of teaching myself how to sleep again, and of feeling THAT way. I thought women were supposed to forget about all this shit, so they want to have other babies...