A few thoughts about sleep...

Here I sit on the couch on a Sunday morning guzzling coffee out of my favorite Michael Buble mug. I've been up since 7am and there is a purple shadow under my eyes. I managed to sink into bed at 1am last night due to the much anticipated date out on the town with my husband. After taking the kids to the pool yesterday, feeding them, bathing them and myself, cleaning the house up, picking up a pizza for their dinner and the babysitter, and after the date taking the babysitter home, I washed my face, slathered on my anti-aging cream, arranged my pillows, turned on my fan for white noise, and slept fitfully as usual. After it takes me an hour to fall asleep, I believe I sleep with "one eye open" so to speak. With every cough that comes out of my 20 month old baby during the wee hours of the night, I jerk awake like a soldier ready for battle. When my husband decides to make a midnight snack and rattles every pot and pan in the kitchen that we own, I sit up in bed half delirious with sleep thinking that one of the children is sick or in need. Sometimes there is a huge storm while we slumber, and I toss and turn, tormented with bad dreams where my children are caught in a fire or tornado or other natural disaster, and I can't rescue them. On occasion, one of my offspring decides to sleep walk, and will roam briefly into the hall while muttering incoherently. Every little sound during the night in my home sets me on edge, drifting from my short lived deep sleep to where I realize that someone is waking up to throw up on the floor beside their bed. Meanwhile, my husband can fall asleep in five seconds and sleep like a log all night. As I sit here with one eye drooping, staring out the window with no desire to bathe and dress my children for church, I think back to a time where I slept like a baby... before I had kids. So I guess you could say that I had the best sleep of my life nine years ago! I could sleep for ten hours at a time and it was a sleep so deep and undisturbed that I was practically unconscious. My mother would try to wake me at noon, griping about the fact that I was wasting my day. But there was no better pleasure in the world than to sleep deeply with no responsibility or obligation hanging over my head. I would finally slither out of bed in the middle of the afternoon, taking a ridiculously long shower where I would exfoliate my perfectly unblemished body, and then my only only concern was getting enough money to go the movies that evening. Ahhhh, those were the days. Well, you can't go back in time and I wouldn't trade those days for anything in the world, even though I will probably never quite sleep like that again. When my kids all pile into my bed in the morning with their killer morning breath, kissing me and tickling each other, I know this is what life is about. There are sacrifices I make because I love my little chickens more than anything. And later I plan to sneak in a little nap!