A Typical Night

People around me often wonder why I am so moody... Everyone has ups and downs even when they sleep 8+ hours a night... Now imagine yourself with a newborn (yep it's expected you will get up several times a night and if you are lucky by 3-6months they are sleeping 5+ hours a night) but what if... That turns into 6 months... 9 months... A year... 18 months... 24 months... Longer hey we are officially at 26 months and counting.  Up until a month ago Dacotah woke up Every hour to every hour and a half... All night every single night.... May not seem like a lot given he would eat and go back to sleep in 5 to 10 minutes. So for a quick med lesson the human brain sleep cycle REM sleep cycles start after you have been asleep for 60-90 min... What really? Yep I'm sure you figured it out! For 2 solid years neither mother nor son had hit a full REM cycle... Which leads to massive sleep deprivation. Adding the weighted blanket he now sleeps anywhere from 90 minutes to 5 hours... So we are getting some sleep for which I am very thankful but it will take at a minimum of 1 year to fully recover from the massive sleep deprivation. 

So for everyone's humor here is the current night in our house:

8pm Dacotah asks to go night night... I know from experience he is no where near ready for bed but at the same time I am exhausted from a long day so maybe just this once he will nurse and go to sleep.   (Every single time this backfires and I can hear Samuel L. Jackson reading the story Go the **** to Sleep, I have to find humor, if you are offended sorry but get over it) so he nurses and he sits up, I crawls off the bed and goes back to daddy in the Living Room... I am too tired to get up so I fall asleep knowing he is safe.

10pm Travis wakes me up by opening the bedroom door (I am a super light sleeper despite the fan and sound machine) Dacotah crawls over me and nurses until he falls asleep, at this point I'm wide awake from my brief nap, so I go into the living room and watch Survivor with Travis.

1 AM: he slept 3 hours!!!! I walk into the bedroom and he is whining and kicking the heck out of the wall (sensory related). He's off his blanket (usually he will roll on top of it and sleep) he nurses and goes back to sleep. It's now 1:20, I should be sleeping and I'm heading that way but I have thoughts that run through my mind and blogging them helps. (I realize as I'm typing this we stopped brushing him during the day, the OT in Kingsport had suggested it and I'm now wondering if we should have kept it up despite switch OTs, so tomorrow I will add it back into our routine and brush him every 2 hours and see if next week if he sleeps longer) what better way to keep track than to make a blog that tracks sleep patterns... Ok off to sleep for mommy be back in a bit.

4:10 AM😀 Another 3 hours and 10 minutes woot woot! My sleep when I'm finally hitting dream stage is full of nightmares, I hate it, I know it's a dream but I have a hard time waking up from them. I wonder what he dreams about because some nights he will moan a lot in his sleep. 

4:16, he's back to sleep

5:45-5:52 awake, nurses, and back to sleep

6:58-7:04 awake, nurses, and back to sleep

8:22 up and ready to start the day, Mommy is exhausted and I think a lot has to do with his schedule since 4, the waking up continuously almost as though he has an internal alarm waking him up every hour...

Anyway so my plan is to log again in a week so I can track his behavior more efficiently for the OT